Reviews & Comments of Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary chrome extension

Fundamental for learners of Chinese.

As a Chinese learner, I love this extension so much. Thank you!

Just got it, seems pretty cool. But the method to activate is rather clunky. I would prefer if it added an option to the right-click menu. But the way it is right now may prove to be useful, since I know very few characters.

Such a useful app. I've been using this addon for years to learn Chinese. I learned to read Chinese just by using this app.

Literally incredible. I'm a Chinese person who grew up in the West and so I know spoken Chinese but my written knowledge is still shaky. This extension is so simple to use but so powerful. It provides all the information I need at a glance. I really love the colour-coding pinyin for easy reading and the example phrases option. Overall, this is easily one of the best extensions I've ever used in terms of doing its job and doing it well

not all pin yin is correct, but i dont knopw how to report it

Great plugin that I've used for years but never took the time to review. Couldn't live without it and use it all the time.

A+

its not working well with pdf in dropbox

Not working anymore on Google Docs after the latest update.

Sadly, it does not work anymore.

I really love this extension but recently this extension is not working in Google doc anymore, because of google updated their platform, this app should keep up to date to match with the google platform.

I find this app this very useful, but recently it is not working for Google Doc, I scroll this to google doc chinese characters, it didn't pop up the meaning.

Was a good app but apparently no longer works

I have been using this tool for years and all of a sudden it does not work on Google Docs anymore, which was mainly where I was using it. I have tried opening new docs, changing the font, uninstalling and re-installing all to no avail. It's such a shame because it was so useful. Still useful for webpages, but not what I need it for mostly.

The single best extension for learning to read Chinese, has similar function like NJStar software. I went from unable to read Mandarin newspaper to being able to read it.

Great extension, been using for years and loved it !!!

Fantastic add-on. Works like a charm, is fast and reliable, and even identifies rare and uncommon words with ease.

Overall great and really useful. However, it sometimes doesn't work in Google Docs (in some Docs but not others, with no observable difference in the Doc settings). It seems you can get around this by starting a new Google Doc, but you can't always do that (e.g., a shared Doc). Toggling the extension and reinstalling did not work. If anyone knows how to fix, please let me know.

very good tool and easy to use

This is very handy for learners of Chinese. Really love it!

It suddenly stopped working on my Google docs...

really good! learning chinese is now more effortless than ever

awesome extension I'm in chinese class and I'm not the best at reading in chinese. This help me a lot. Thank you to who ever made this extension.

I love it. It works perfectly, looks nice and clear, translates words as well as single characters. The dictionary is good, too. It gives you all the relevant meanings in a concise form, translates stuff like names and titles, and even provides brief information about people, internet platforms and so on. Remembering words and exporting them to flashcards is something I use a lot, too. I even got a paid tool to do the thing, but this one works better. There's even a shortcut to open a corresponding grammar article when a particle is selected. Together with Pleco, it's the best thing I ever used to learn Chinese!

Just amazing, thanks!!

An essential extension for any Chinese learner of any level! It's extremely useful, and I love that it'll recognize common phrases and idioms, while still allowing you to see the literal definition of each character. I've used this for years and would be lost without it.

Really useful - the Skritter interaction is a handy tool!

I love that this can cover both simplified and traditional Chinese, and can convert to pinyin and bopomofo and give english definition. As someone who learned traditional and bopomofo first, this helps alot its just a character I don't recognize in Simplified but know in Traditional. It does a decent job with idioms and slang, but feels like it misses some. It is probably hard to keep up with just like how slang is ever-evolving in English too and there is so many, but it would be appreciated if it maintained efforts here too。 An example was 冒个泡 which I could read just fine and understood the literal translation but needed to actually search to understand it is used on context for a quiet person to suddenly speak up/make an appearance for a bit

Still okay, but not what i have in mind

wow!

Extremely handy and helpful, especially when I find myself in situations that require skimming through hundreds of pages of classical Chinese obscurity, or just very specific expertise-level jargons across various fields. I've been using this extension for 4 years now, and still counting.

best mandarin translator thus far for reading novel and articles

Very useful and convenient for when you need it. Won't get in the way of your usual browsing, but very helpful when reading large blocks of Chinese! Good with general knowledge, too - like historical figures or famous celebrities.

This extension is amazing! I use it everyday. I wish I could venmo the developers some money for their efforts!

Works for me. Can you please add cantonese.

Excellent range of vocabulary and easy to use.

This is one of the most useful tool for learning or teaching Mandarin Chinese. I highly recommend it!

Was amazing but in the last few days it stopped translating phrases (more than one character) and is only translating single characters. Any way to solve this?

Love this extension, have been using it for years!

While extension is active, it is impossible to drag and select texts with mouse. Please try to add this.

dumb app did not work at all . just terrible

OUTSTANDING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Request: I would like options to customize the rendering of the window like changing the color, selecting the font size. It would be even better if I would make the text black and background white with a bigger font. Also it'd me much more useful if it had the option of saving the sentence along with the word as well as providing clozed version of the sentence, a blanked version of the sentence, etc a la rikaisama https://images.app.goo.gl/GrYMBpZ8zmuvJ89Y7

It's made my Chinese language exchanges so much more efficient.Thank you so much! p.s it works with text on Google Docs which is great!

Great tool for Chinese language students

the best friend

The best tool for a Chinese learner. Love it ^_^

Hi, it has worked for me in Google Docs, but recently after it asked me for more permissions to read my browsing data, it stopped working in Google Docs. Tried pressing alt while hovering, and reinstalling. But still cannot work. Please advise.

This extension is incredibly useful when living in Asia with limited character knowledge. It's a lifesaver. To the developer: I'd be glad to pay for a premium version if it could support optical character recognition, meaning the ability to recognise characters in pictures or non-text material. I use this for buying online in Taiwan and China, and a lot of the pages for products on taobao or shopee are no longer in text form. The text is included in page long graphics that can't be read by the extension at the moment. Currently I have to get my phone out and use the optical feature in Google translate. Having it in the browser would save me a lot of time and bother.

not work in input text area

Highly recommended for whom understands English and wants to learn Chinese by just putting mouse on the Chinese character

If you could, please create the option to put the Pinyin below or on top of the corresponding Chinese characters. Pinyin on the side of the words makes reading extra difficult. This is because different Chinese words have different lengths, making your eyes have to move as you scroll through. Please also create the option of placing the traditional Chinese characters below the simplified ones as opposed to on the side of the simplified ones, or the option to get rid of the traditional characters being placed alongside the simplified characters. They are distracting.

This extension is extremely useful for reading chinese material and exporting to another system like flashcards. Is there any way you could make the remember option only save the first entry in the list of possible words to the word list? Maybe you could add an option for this? It would save a bit of time when exporting so I could export the entire list instead of deselecting the individual characters and leaving the phrases

Couldn't recommend it more, absolutely useful.

Love it! Easy to learn how to read :)!

Very helpful, when learning chinese. It's a pity there are no such extensions for other browsers.

thank you for this extension!

Causes high CPU load on MacOS X, constantly at 99.5% and cooling fans on MacBook spin up to maximum speed when several browser tabs are open.

I use this every day. I love the links to dictionaries (I use MDBG via Alt-5) and Chinese Grammar Wiki. An excellent tool for free, 谢谢！

Pretty good, I would say the only thing it's missing is the ability to show ONLY simplified OR traditional characters, as I myself only work with traditional and when I'm reviewing the definition the simplified characters can get in the way (especially when writing down new characters!). Aside from that I'd definitely recommend it!

I would like to use it with Rikaikun. Can you add an option to pop-up it 200px to the right/left? Just an idea.

I always use it. Very good.

Works great. I like that it has full support for the Copyfish OCR extension, so I can first use Copyfish to read Chinese from images, and then use Zhongwen to translate them.

This is without a doubt, the most very useful extension for Chinese Learners. Have been using it for the last few months now.

Doesn't work. This other one works well Perapera https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/perapera-chinese-popup-di/hlcddplhfenagbaipfjhhcjmebhkkaif

I'm not one for leaving reviews but I've been using this extension for several months now and honestly it has quite literally saved me hours of time, just hover over and it shows several meanings, and seems to be reliable enough in picking up on compounds. This app could potentially speed up language learning to half the time it took 10 - 20 years ago, very nice

Just as 'google translate app', an icon must pop up only after selecting text, and then choose whether to see the entries. Secondly, activate this app by using a keyboard key.

this thing saves my life in my college chinese class all the time, i love it so so much and it's great for studying!

If we can activate this app by using a keyboard key, that would be great. It is annoying to turn it on and off from menu.

Fully-featured extension!

Sometimes when I have the extension off the sites I visit generate the following error on every mouse move event: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'clientX' of undefined at Object._onMouseMove (content.js:813) at HTMLDocument.onMouseMove (content.js:781) Line 813 is the following: if (tdata.clientX && tdata.clientY) ... tdata is assigned on line 784: var tdata = window.zhongwen; I guess that is due to the plugin being off and so window.zhongwen === undefined, but remember to also unhook the event handlers ;)

Very useful. It helps a lot.

Excellent tool for learning chinese. Extremely simple and easy to use

A great tool for Chinese learners. It helps to read web pages, online texts, forms, newspapers and more. It works with the Duokan online Reader. Has quick links to Chinese Grammar Wiki for more in-depth analysis, and allows saving a copy of words/characters on a list for study/flash cards.

really good and informational

Love the app. One suggestion: it looks like there's a bug on line 821 of content.js where you check the startContainer property of variable 'range', but sometimes range is null. This generates tons of JS errors that clogs up the console. You should put a null check in or open source the project so people can submit a pull request to fix it.

Please have an option to remove the shortcuts popup that shows whenever the extension is activated. I don't need to be reminded every time about how to use this extension.

Just incredible! For the very first time i found a really extension that worth it 5 stars

As a Chinese student this extension is simply a blessing, I've been recommending it to all my classmates since my first semester and idk what I would do without it tbh.

This changed my way of learning vocabulary... IT'S A MUST!!!

Works super well!

Awesome! ：）

Very helpful; I've been looking for something like this for years. Thank you, Chris, whoever you are! I especially like the ability to export a word list to Excel. Wish this worked on Chrome for the iPhone (not the developer's problem), or that the developer would make an iPhone native app.

This is amazing! It even recognizes almost all phrases! With this you can save lots of $$$ on lessons! Thank you!!!

very useful.

I use this to create word lists and export them to create my own customized lessons in anki. I have been doing it for the last 6 months. I love it and believe it is one of the most efficient ways to build reading. The parsing tool allows for you to log both the individual characters as well as the words with just a click of the button. IF you havent checked out the integration with Anki you should!!!! Absolutely brilliant! Learn the quick keys and keep up with your flashcards and you will be blazing through mandarin before you know it.

some minor issues, like no easy way to suggest edits or meanings for terms that aren't included. Overall I make great use of this app so the minor problems are not enough to warrant giving it anything other than a five.

Extremely useful for learning Mandarin. I wish it had Jyutping (Cantonese pinyin) also :)

Fantastic, use it all the time. I love it.

This helps me a lot in searching info on mandarin sites. 5/5

perfect tool for learning and reading chinese text

great tool to learn

awesome ....

I love it! Helps so much, thank you!

Good extension. My only gripe with it is that the area in which it detects the words are too large! Even when my mouse cursor wasn't hovering over any word, it still grabbed the nearest word. It gets quite annoying after a while trying to read a webnovel. Possible solutions would be to: 1. Reduce the detection level of the cursor. 2. Only after selection of words would the auto pop up trigger. 3. Set a right click option instead of an auto popup. I would give it 4 stars if solution 3 is implemented and 5 stars if solution 1 or 2 is implemented.

Great I use this with the Rikaikun extension because i'm learning both Japanese/Kanji & Chinese/Hanzi they work great together and have the same custom interface

Something changed and when you export My Words to a text file, wén zhāng becomes we′n zha¯ng. It was fine a couple of weeks ago.

really nice

Really helpful, with Chinese words, slang and idioms. Also contains both simplified and traditional translations, along with some Taiwan-specific content, which is useful for me. My only criticism is that it doesn't work well in some text windows, e.g. when typing a mail in gmail, causing the cursor to jump around.

Since I can't download Pleco dictionary on my Chrome..this is substitition.

Works superbly. Better than Chrome's built-in 'translate this page' feature. I can see the meaning of chinese words and phrases with a mouse over, instead of having everything translated to English. Very useful for anyone who wants to learn chinese.

<3

Great extension for anyone learning Chinese. It has become an invaluable resource to me for learning Mandarin the past few years. There is no reason not to use it as the extension itself has very little overhead and doesn't use much RAM.