Yinghan English-Chinese Dictionary 2.3

Yinghan English-Chinese Dictionary 2.3 is designed to make it easy to translate from English into Chinese on your Palm OS device. Contents of Yinghan can be displayed in simplified Chinese characters in various ways. Before discussing the various ways doing this, a brief introduction to Chinese character styles is presented.

There are two major Chinese character sets: traditional and simplified. Traditional characters are used primarily in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and other major Chinese population centers outside of Mainland China. The traditional characters were the official character style in Mainland until the 60's when the official simplified characters are introduced to ease the learning of Chinese characters. Simplified character set has a substantial overlap with traditional characters.

The two Chinese character sets are encoded differently. The traditional character set is larger and usually coded in the Big5 code. The simplified Chinese characters are coded in various forms of GB codes. The two codes are not compatible and need a translator to go from one to the other. Yinghan contents are in Big5 code. It can be mapped to and displayed in simplified characters, with the exceptions of some rare characters that do not exist in the simplified character set.

The following are the common ways, in decreasing order of preference, to display Yinghan content in simplified characters:

1. Using a Big5 code based Chinese OS that can display Big5 text in simplified characters. CJKOS is a good example of the Chinese OS. You need to install both the Big5 and GB fonts and input methods, and select Big5 as the character set and GB as the display character set. All features of Yinghan and Hanying work.
2. Using a GB code based Chinese OS that can view Big5 code. ChOS 4 is an example of this. You need to install the simplified version, the traditional font and the Big5 to GB converter. All Yinghan and Hanying features work. The advantage of this approach is that if you are using primarily GB code and simplified characters with other applications, this is the easiest way. Note, however, that ChOS 4 only works for Palm OS 4.1 or earlier.
3. Using a GB code based Chinese OS without the ability to convert to or from Big5. ChOS 5 and localized Palm OS 5.3SC are examples of this type of Chinese OS. You need to install Abstract's codetogb.pdb database to convert Yinghan contents to GB code. This file is contained in the package located at Yinghan GB package. GB version of Hanying will work in this environment. However, phonetic utility and Mandarin synthesis features cannot be used in this environment. 

Major Features:

1. Based on the popular Lexicomp English-Chinese dictionary. Over 1 million hardware units have been sold.
2. Over 55,000 headword entries and over 150,000 words and variants recognized.
3. Voice synthesis capability. Unique and useful feature for learning pronunciation of English and Chinese words.
4. Optional Chinese-English dictionary included.
5. Dual auto-complete and manual browse modes provide usage convenience and power.
6. Capable of mark-and-cross reference on any English or Chinese word displayed on the screen.
7. Recognize the base form of words and phrases from their common inflections.
8. Generate both regular and irregular inflections of nouns, verbs and modifiers.
9. Wildcard search in manual mode. Help one to look up a word when one does not know the precise spelling of the word.
10. Remember the last 50 unique words looked up.
11. DA Launcher version that makes one-tap-lookup possible on any displayed English or Chinese word in ANY Palm OS application.
12. Utility to look up the phonetic spelling in Pinyin or Zhuyin of any Chinese character. Not available in the simplified character version.
13. VFS support. All supported memory cards and sticks.
14. Font selection.
15. Fast response to inquiry and support questions because care!
16. Trial version has access to all the words in the dictionary.

Enhancements: Adds speech and may have some unspecified features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Requirements:

• Palm OS 3.1 or newer.
• About 1.7 MB of storage is required to install Yinghan.
• A Chinese OS capable of displaying Big5 or GB code is required. A Chinese OS capability can be built in localized Palm OS or a third party software. Yinghan does not contain a Chinese OS. Yinghan has been tested with the following Chinese OS for Palm OS®. Other Chinese OS should work as well.
• • ChOS. Resell ChOS at a discount. Please visit the purchasing section for more information.
  • Palmdragon.
  • CJKOS. You can purchase CJKOS via Handango. Please visit the purchasing section for more information.
  • Palm OS 5.3SC