Full-featured Smart Chinese Reader 3.2 is now 100% free!

[yifeng]

I am a teacher at Zhangzhou Institute of Technology, China. My study focuses on Natural Language Processing. Based on this technology, in 2014 my team developed Smart Chinese Reader - a program to help people read and learn Chinese. Smart Chinese Reader has been updated through several versions and made great progress since then. The latest version is 3.2 whose advantages can be boiled down into two points: 

 

1. Built-in web browser: Smart Chinese Reader offers a built-in web browser with popup Chinese dictionary on mouseover. Users can read any Chinese web pages easily now, simply hover mouse over a Chinese word to pull up its definition right on the page. 

 

I believe Smart Chinese Reader will let you know more about China, make foreigners' life and work easier in China. With the unique built-in web browser, you can search baidu.com for any Chinese information, browse qq.com for news, visit taobao.com or jd.com for shopping, 12306.com to buy railway tickets, 58.com to find local merchants and service providers, jiayuan.com or baihe.com or ylike.com to date Chinese boys/girls. 

 

2. Deep reading: Users can select a section in a web page and study it in depth with more learning aids of Smart Chinese Reader, including segmented text,  part of speech tagging, full-sentence translation, full-sentence pronunciation, example sentences, HSK ranking, and review. Smart Chinese Reader is also a great help for Chinese learning!

 

In order to let more Chinese language learners use the program, for our original goal is to develop a popular Chinese language learning tool, we decide to publish Smart Chinese Reader 3.2 and the following versions as freeware. Please learn more about Smart Chinese Reader and download it from http://www.nlptool.com/. You can use it all the time for free. We are looking forward to hearing your feedbacks and suggestions!

[abcdefg]

Looks good. Thanks!

[Luxi]

I tried previous versions of Chinese Smart Reader including 3.1, but they didn't quite work for me. Probably because I am quite used to reading Chinese e-books in different browsers and devices. I normally use Duokan or DangDang's IOS readers (both have dictionaries) with Pleco in the background for more comprehensive dictionaries. Most of my Chinese ebooks are from those two stores so I couldn't use Smart Chinese Reader for them. 

However I would be interested in checking up the 'deep reading'  functions in your 3.2 reader, but can't find the download link for it in your site. Do you have the link for 3.2?

 

Added: No need! I just found the 3.2 download in Baidu (the link to the Baidu download is in the website 'Downloads' page)

 

Added 2 - Feedback

Installed and tried. Windows 10 didn't moan much about installing it. First impressions are good. Version 3.2 is a huge improvement on the previous version I had tried. The tabbed UI helps finding things and it works really fast.

 

I really like the browser to read newspapers, it really makes newspaper reading less of a heavy chore - even Chrome with Zhongwen or PeraPera seem more cumbersome. I'll have to try it further to see how I can use it --- besides finding out what 'deep reading' is all about. The text tab seems a bit strange, but early days yet, and I still have to read the online Manual.

 

Edit 3: Thanks for making it free.

 

[yifeng]

@Luxi, I am very happy to hear your prompt feedback. The download page of SmartCR is http://www.nlptool.com/download.html where we provide 3 hosting sites.

 

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I normally use Duokan or DangDang's IOS readers (both have dictionaries) with Pleco in the background for more comprehensive dictionaries.

 Thank you to let me know your reading experience. Understanding users’ reading experiences is important for us to improve SmartCR. I think there are two situation of reading for Chinese language learners. First is reading selected stories, essays, novels etc.,  for example, you may read a short story again and again to learn Chinese words and grammar. Second is browsing various and huge Chinese information for practical uses. Mobile devices may be more convenient for the first situation because you can take and use them at many locations, while the built-in browser of SmartCR on PC is more suitable for the second situation.

 

There are some websites which provide tons of information. For example, when you want to buy a shirt online, more details you know about the shirt will help you make a decision. So pages on 淘宝 (taobao.com) or 京东 (jd.com) are always long. Although they have mobile versions, the smaller screen of cell phones limits the amount of information displayed in a page. In order to obtain enough information quickly for shopping, travel, investigation, writing, etc. it is more convenient to view pages of such websites on PC.

 

The search engine 百度 (baidu.com) is indispensable whether for daily life or for work in China. Baidu.com does provide APP on cell phones, but search results are reduced to adapt to cell phones, thus comparison and assess based on search results are difficult to be carried out. So retrieving information with baidu APP is very inconvenient, it is worse for foreigners because they cannot directly use Pleco APP to look for meanings of Chinese words displayed on baidu APP. Smart Chinese Reader makes baidu.com usable on PC for foreigners.

 

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The text tab seems a bit strange

The text tab is used for texts in other file formats than html, such as pdf and docx. You can copy them from their respective applications and paste them into Smart Chinese Reader. Then click the “Study” button, they will be displayed in the Beginner tab and Advanced tab with formats easier to read and study.

[Luxi]

7 hours ago, yifeng said:

@Luxi, I am very happy to hear your prompt feed

 

That was after only a few minutes of trying. It looked promising at first, and after more use, I'm really impressed. It brings a number of different functions into one single app and certainly makes browsing the web a lot easier and faster. It also makes shopping sites dangerously accessible (luckily paying without a Chinese bank account is not so easy). I'm a little more advanced learner, but still found a lot of very helpful functions in this new version, can't list them all yet. Using this version of the app is very easy and fast, it should be encouraging for even beginners to browse the web in Chinese. 

I still have to check out all the options. I already spotted a few things that I really like. It's great that there's a way to identify place and people's names at a glance, that can be a real problem, not just for beginners! The quick translation tool is also great, I found it useful to be able to get a quick translation of new 'slogans' while reading the news. Last but not least: your examples are fantastic! Really well chosen and useful for learners.

One thing I'm not sure is a bug or just my not doing it right. I can't get the Favourites links (another very useful function) to work double-clicking from the pop-up, it look like the browser may freeze when the popup is open? It's not a big problem because the links work instantly when copied and pasted onto the browser address box.

Thanks again!

[yifeng]

@Luxi Great, I am very glad that you found Smart Chinese Reader useful!

 

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it look like the browser may freeze when the popup is open

Once you double-click one of your favorite links in the Favorites dialog, it is displayed in the browser instantly. As illustrated below, I have double-clicked the link of Microsoft Bing, and it was displayed in the browser. To go back to the browser, you should close the Favorites dialog by clicking “X” at the top right corner of the dialog.

[yifeng]

Smart Chinese Reader 3.3 is released. In the new version, quick user guides are embedded into the Beginner/Advanced/Examples/Review tabs.

Smart Chinese Reader is an innovative learning program that incorporates many new features including word segmentation, part of speech tagging, full-sentence translation, full-sentence pronunciation, example sentence search, etc. Some of them are strange to users. So new users had to read the long user manual provided on our website before. The embedded user guide in a tab provides direct help for using the tab. It is more effective and convenient than the online user manual. However, it is recommended to read our online documents including manual, tips, FAQs to make the best use of Smart Chinese Reader.

 

You can download and use Smart Chinese Reader 3.3 for free from http://www.nlptool.com/ Any feedbacks and suggestions are highly appreciated!