Chinese Language Tools

Here we have reviewed Chinese language tools we have found the most useful in our investigations.

Mandarinspot

Mandarin Spot has a Chinese-English dictionary, but the real power comes from its Annotation feature. Simply copy and paste the source text into the tool and click annotate and the tool will do its best to separate those endless Chinese sentences out into parsed ‘words’ and give you a hover-over dictionary lookup. On top of that, if you toggle on the ‘for printing’ feature, it’ll come up with the list of vocab in the text which you can adjust depending on your language level according to HSK (hanyu shuiping kaoshi). A great China OSINT tool in the box for Chinese language learners and those wishing to engage with material in the source language!

All Source China rating- 9/10

Pleco

Ah, Pleco! A super-useful app for Android or iOS. It has useful dictionaries, sure, but we’d say the most useful features are the OCR allowing you to lookup characters using your phone’s camera, but especially the handwriting feature which allows you to handwrite a character in and be given the pronunciation and meaning. With Pleco so forgiving of stroke order when inputting characters, it beats other handwriting-recognition apps and sites hands down in our view. Really useful when you come across unfamiliar vocabulary. Plus you can create your own flashcard lists if useful vocab comes up.

 All Source China rating- 10/10

Mouse Tooltip

Mouse Tooltip Translator does a really good job at simplifying the process of translation. By hovering your mouse cursor over a word or phrase on a webpage, it provides instant translations. It supports multiple languages, making it versatile for a wide range of users. This extension is powered by Google and Bing translators, adding to the accuracy and reliability of translations. It also has experimental versions of lesser known translation tools, which is useful if you want to get another opinion on the translation.

All Source China rating – 9/10

DeepL

From a Chinese language perspective, DeepL Translator is not the best choice. The translator does offer alternative meanings to Chinese characters than Google or Bing, so it is great for different interpretations to sentences or words. Other languages work a lot better in this translator so we would recommend DeepL for anything other than Chinese. DeepL does had a built in dictionary which we have found very useful.

All Source China rating – 5/10