Pleco - Translating English to Mandarin - DICT Tab

Have you got Pleco on your phone already? If you haven’t, please download it now, if not the following post, won’t be any use for you. It is the doing that is important.

Got it? Let’s start.

When we first open up the app, you will be shown to this screen:

Did you see the blue letter on the right hand corner, that indicates that it accepts input in English. It means that it will translate the English word that you key in to Mandarin/Chinese. However, when letter “E” is shown, the app is smart enough to identify what kind of language it is that you key in. So I suggest not to touch that. See the following example, when it is in "E" mode.

When you key in "Day" It will show you all the result that contains the word "day" in it. See the word in blue highlight

When you key in "Dai" as there isn't English for it, it will automatically detect it as hanyu pinyin (the Chinese phonics), thus the above result!

Then, when you finish your typing by adding "ly" at the back, it will detect "daily" as English word and return with the above result, where it contains the word "daily".

This how smart the app is!

However, just for your information, you have to know that you can change the letter E to “C” shorts for Chinese by clicking on it. When it is in "C" mode, then the app will treat all the words that you key in as Chinese Pinyin or the best thing is to key in the Chinese characters. If you are beginner, I suggest to keep it in "E" mode.

Again, this specific post is to show you how to translate English words/phrases to Chinese. So please, keep the E letter.

Let’s start translating. I want to introduce you to numbers in Chinese.  So, in the search box, please key in “one” and you will get the following as your search result.

Just like any search engine, most of the time, the first search result (the one on top) usually is the most relevant. However to confirm it, before clicking on the first search result, you can compare the meaning with a few other results at the bottom. Reading them, I think it makes more sense to us that the first is what we want. ONE as in number! So, click on it, you will see this page.

The top part, "一" is the Chinese character for One (1). PY means the pinyin. It is the phonics. It is how we should pronounce the character above it. Even, when you are not taught about pinyin yet, you already know how to pronounce it, right? That’s why I mentioned the similarity in Bahasa Indonesia and Chinese Phonics. If you want to confirm your pronunciation is correct, there is a speaker button beside "yi", click on it and listen to the recorded native. Make sure our volume is not off!

Now, let's look at DICT Tab.

See the circled part in your right hand side, PLC, CC and UNI. You can open them up, by clicking on the abbreviation in blue, to see the details.

Under PLC you will see the following:

The number “1” at the side, before the word “one” shows you that it is one possible meaning for the character “一”。 Underneath it, it shows you some of the example of the usage of word“一”.

Going down further, You might see 2., 3. and so on, they all shows other meanings for the character  “一”, such as; single, alone, same, whole, each, per, every time, also, concentrated, wholehearted, etc…. Again, the phrases/sentences underneath each definition show you the proper usage. Don’t worry that you don’t understand, you just have to know which one to focus on. I am introducing all necessary parts to you, so that you know why they are there and in the long run, you gonna need them.

That's all about PLC that you have to know for now. 

Next, try to open up the CC. It is a more simplified version of defining the meaning of “一”, without the sample sentences.

You can see that the pinyin provided you with another way of pronouncing this character “一”, "yao". As I have mentioned, one Chinese character can have several meanings, depending on the usage and context. Also, one Chinese character can have several ways of pronouncing it, depending on the usage. We pronounce “一” as yao when we need to spell out numbers digit by digit such as in phone number. So that the sound is clear!

Next is under UNI, it is a much more simpler translation than the 2 above. However there is an additional pinyin to it. It is all "yi", however if you notice there are different symbol on top of the letter "i". This is the tone in Chinese. We will be introduced the different sounds much later, after we are finished and know how to use all the tools.

Try to digest the information above before we move on to the next tab in my next post. As of now, you can play with this. Try to key in "two", "dog" or any other words that you would like to translate to Mandarin. Please key in only word for now, not Phrases.

Have Fun Exploring,

Linda Tan