This is an issue I cannot understand for the life of me: why is the pinyin included in almost every single Chinese translation…?
This is a word I just came across and took a screenshot of:
This is quite the annoyance when learning Chinese.
The pinyin is already displayed alongside the word - why the hell is it included in the translation too?
Sometimes people even include the Chinese character in the translation too, how silly is that? The character and the pinyin are both already shown on LingQ!
This makes flashcards effectively useless for guessing the pronunciation along with the translation.
As a result of people doing this, I constantly have to create my own translations through dictionaries. Of course, I’ve done this for thousands and thousands of LingQs now so I am sort of used to it. However, I’d love if there was a way to completely avoid these stupid user submitted entries.
(Also, I was not around for the formation of LingQ, but is it possible that LingQ actually started this trend by providing their own translations with the pinyin included when Chinese was first added? Just a theory of mine since the pinyin is included on almost every top translation on every word.)
I am sorry for the angry post, but this is something that has been grinding my gears for the last half a year that I’d love to know more about.
I think its because you can’t always see the pinyin displayed along with the word. I use offline mode on the mobile app and at least half the words don’t load the pronunciations. Thus the only way i can understand it is by listening and sounding it out or by putting in the translation. Although this is for Japanese, I would assume its the same for Chinese.
These are user created hints, and users added them for a reason. Pinyin for Mandarin and hiragana (for Japanese) wasn’t displayed above the hints until relatively recently - so it was extremely helpful to add the pinyin to Mandarin or hiragana to Japanese hints.
Adding pinyin/hiragana is still not redundant! Without those hints, there would be many words listed on the vocab page, for example, we wouldn’t be able to read in isolation, albeit tags are increasing. Some also find it convenient to add a kanji hint for words displayed only in kana. When I return to Mandarin, I will most certainly continue to add pinyin hints for myself.
Ah, okay, that makes more sense. Makes sense that I didn’t know this since I haven’t been around for super long.
I know it’s a long shot, but I’d love if LingQ could add a way to detect these translations since they are now useless/annoying to most new users. Folks that have been around a while might still want them, but even if they added a simple setting to detect and filter out pinyin-containing hints that would make the translations A LOT cleaner.
I do it for all my translations of Mandarin and Cantonese. Because otherwise it’s not displayed and I don’t know exactly how it’s pronounced. Especially with the Cantonese, as I’ve never had working text-to-speech on LingQ. Seeing the character without knowing how it’s pronounced is extremely annoying.
I remove the pinyin from the best translation as I go (unless the default lingQ pinyin is incorrect). I think it just comes down to preference on how you learn/review. Personally I really hate the pinyin being in the translation. as well.
