Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

Tools for putting pinyin above characters?


hismaimai8888

Recommended Posts

  • New Members

Hi!

I'm again thinking of reading a lot of books quickly to solidify the words and their usage I've learned over the last while. For that I want to put the pinyin above the words. Are there any tools out there that allow me to do entire books almost in one go, and that give good results?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never found this to be a good idea as your eyes are invariably pulled towards the pinyin rather than the characters. The Chinese  Graded Reader Series do this but it's very problematic for many. If you are trying to solidify the words, looking at the pinyin wouldn't do that in my opinion. Ij you need to check so many words I'd say it's better to drop down to an easier read.  However everyone knows their own learning style !

 

Perhaps Pleco screen reader would be an acceptable halfway house? It is very quick to tap on the icon and look at the unfamiliar words. 

 

Amazon Kindle has a language option but as far as I can remember the installed dictionaries only had Chinese to English (no pinyin) or Chinese to Chinese (pinyin). I don't have my kindle anymore but the Kindle app seems to have C --> C (Pinyin) , C --> E (no pinyin).

 

Having said all that I find Chinese Readers better . My HuaWei Read app that came pre installed with the phone and tablet is pretty good. They have built in audio, and one tap dict that shows pinyin, Chinese and English definitions all in one. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Purple Culture in HK have an online tool that will do it, with several nice options.

 

Check out their other handy gizmos under the "Chinese Tools" menu — quite a few interesting things there.

 

Input: 我们的生活每天都在发生变化

 

Output:

 

1267441572_ScreenShot2018-11-19at22_34_56.thumb.png.f296386dd99b0ca27c399a8b773e3715.png

 

You can export the result as a Word, PDF, or Mobi file.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

your eyes are invariably pulled towards the pinyin rather than the characters

 

Yes I find this to be a problem.


@hismaimai8888, the Sinolingua graded Chinese readers come with a little template you can put over the page, to hide the pinyin.  I posted a "backup" of the template in case anyone loses theirs.

 

If you're making the books yourself, maybe you could export the Word file and edit it so that you have Hanzi on one page and Pinyin on the opposite, like some bilingual texts do?

 

Anyway, having an editable Word version of the annotated text will give you multiple options.  An ebook where you can switch the annotation on and off would be cool.

 

Where are you sourcing the text of the books?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Shelley said:

There is always this

 

Well, how about that. It worked for me using my ancient installation of Word for Mac 2011.  

 

I had no idea that language register thing existed. 

 

The spacing of the pinyin is a bit weird though.

 

1225098130_ScreenShot2018-11-20at02_33_38.png.4537390fe80e39d39f83941008253cb0.png

 

Edit: Turns out there's a setting for that:

 

1151428132_ScreenShot2018-11-20at02_37_50.thumb.png.ba1a1c66ca23900584592f37a5f8cc79.png

 

591567656_ScreenShot2018-11-20at02_38_04.png.043973c05ceea740c4577f15c88eb76f.png

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thats good, I think I need to update my version of word, when I had a new PC earlier this year and had to install everything from scratch I think I used word 2007 instead of 2010 by mistake. This has brought it to light.

 

I wonder if some skillful manipulating of the formatting could solve the spacing problem?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Shelley said:

I wonder if some skillful manipulating of the formatting could solve the spacing problem?

 

See edit above. The Alignment setting in the dialogue fixed it.

 

I don't remember hearing of "Ruby text" before, although I'm familiar with Furigana for Kanji.  Learned something today :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...