New favourite Mandarin apps - CamDictionary & Google Translate

Learning Chinese is difficult... but it's been made easier since I found my perfect combination of iPhone apps. I have tried and tested so many different apps on my phone... installed and uninstalled tons, including ones I paid hard cash for. Now I think I have found my optimum combination! The fact they are all free in the app store is purely a happy coincidence, as believe me if I found an app that helped me learn Mandarin faster, I'd certainly pay dearly for it. As it happens, the best don't charge a penny!

Anyway I've posted before about how much I love my DianHua app, so I won't bore you with the details again. Instead I'll focus on my two new discoveries! Firstly, Google Translate. It's remarkably accurate, probably because it's continually updated and improved by it's users (who suggest better translations if the ones produced are off the mark). It also comes complete with audio (albeit a rather robotic voice). As free apps go, this is indespensible. My DianHua app is excellent for looking up unfamiliar words and storing flashcards of individual characters, but when you need a full sentence translated it becomes pretty useless. Google Translate does the job perfectly though!

My other discovery is a wonderful app called CamDictionary. It's fairly self explanatory. You take a photo of the text you wish to translate, tap the text in the image, and an instant translation pops up! CamDictionary also uses google translate to convert the text to English. Great when you don't know the pinyin for a word or sentence and can't get your silly iPhone to recognise the character your hand-writing on the screen because you've gotten the stroke order wrong (which happens most of the time with me. iPhones are strict teachers when it comes to handwriting Chinese characters! One stroke on the wrong order and it point blank refuses to acknowledge the word you're trying to write. Frustrating but makes sure you learn to write properly!). My only negative comment about the app is that it doesn't provide pinyin alongside the English translation, so you get what the characters mean but not how to say them...

So, who needs to spend tons on expensive iPhone apps to learn Chinese, when you have these 3 gems installed! Brilliant! :D



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