Adding Pinyin

I have a habit of adding pinyin to Chinese lessons that lack it.

I do this by pasting the text (Chinese Characters) into Google Translate, then copying the pinyin which it generates and adding it to the lesson. While I know that Google’s translations are often wanting, I am not aware that the pinyin is not good.

If this is not desirable, I will stop doing the modifications to the lessons. Please let me know if there are any issues with what I am doing.

@jfeka - You’re more than welcome to do this. Just make sure you’re adding it as a lesson resource (Resources > Script Conversions > Pinyin). I’m sure some learners will appreciate it, and those who don’t want to see the Pinyin don’t have to click it. :slight_smile:

I have also done this a few times.

For characters that have multiple pinyin, google translate will sometimes get the correct (context) pinyin wrong. iirc it would get 当 wrong, a lot, as an example. But it should be good enough for the majority of time.

Normally, if I want to read text, but with the option to regularly check pinyin, I just put text into pleco reader. If I’m at a laptop, I use mdbg.

Can you put several sentences into Pleco at the same time?

ginkgo - you can put a whole book into pleco reader.

Thanks iaing, I have tried the Pleco OCR. I photographed a couple of paragraphs and found the Pinyin and translation of individual words. Is this the way to work with paper books?

Can I get Pleco to read out the material I input?

What types of files do I need to input a whole book into Pleco?

Pleco reader will open most text files. Sometimes you may have to just choose a different encoding option when opening.

Typically I just pdf text and save it for reading when offline. If I don’t know a word I touch on it and it will tell me pinyin and definition (in Chinese or English). If the text is dense, I just tap forward a lot reading the pinyin and definitions quickly.

I don’t use pleco for paper books. These days, you can find most Chinese content electronically.

Victor Mair had a post up a while back related to some of this Language Log » The future of Chinese language learning is now

Thanks iaing. Your link led me to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349
This addon will work on any webpage, including with lessons on LingQ. It finds words even when you have turned a whole sentence into a LingQ. Pinyin and a list of possible English meanings comes up for any word.