Windows 8 English to Chinese Dictionary App To Learn Chinese: Bing Dictionary (E-C)
Bing Dictionary (E-C) is a free English to Chinese dictionary app for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 that lets you learn the translations of certain words and sentences into Chinese. This is a really cool way to learn Chinese if you are looking forward to learning it. The app’s interface is pretty well designed, offering tiled blocks catering to specific uses. Towards the left side of the screen will be the sentence of the day which is essentially a video recording of an actual Chinese person who will pronounce the sentence for you in proper accent, and thus, you can learn how to speak it. In the middle will be various words and their meanings and translations to Chinese, and you can click on these words to read more about them in detail.
Bing Dictionary English to Chinese is available for free from the Windows 8 App Store.
Features of Bing Dictionary English to Chinese for Windows 8:
The app has a pretty clean interface, as you can see below:
The leftmost box is a video player which will playback the sentence of the day when you click on it. You can also read the sentence of the day below the video player and its Chinese translation right below the English version. There are two more columns, PICTURE WORDS and WORD-LIST that allow you to access the content as suggested by their titles. You can click on the words under PICTURE WORDS category to see more details about the same. Picture words are easier to learn as they are accompanied by pictures. WORD-LIST category is for advanced learners and you can access these words by clicking on the learning categories like CET-4, etc.
PICTURE WORDS:
Upon clicking on a picture word, you can read its definitions and translations in English as well as Chinese. You can also click on the speaker button to listen to the Chinese pronunciation of the word. As you scroll to the right, you can also see the word used in sentences, to know more about its usage.
WORD-LIST:
Depending on the level of word list that you have clicked on, you will be shown the list of words with their Chinese versions right below them. This is a nice way to learn how to write these words in Chinese at a quick glance, and if you need more information about these words, you can also click on the tiles of the corresponding words to learn more about them, including their usage, meaning, etc.
CONTROL BARS:
In the main screen of the app, you can also access the control bars of the app by right clicking on any empty area of the app, and the control bars will be revealed from the top of the screen. In these, you can choose to select various options like choosing to view the homepage or to view the word list.
The homepage is the main screen of the app. Clicking on Word List will take you to a screen where you can choose the level of the word list that you wish to view and upon doing that, you will be shown the list of words.
Overall, this is a really nice app to have on your Windows 8 or your Windows 8.1 device if you are looking to brush up your Chinese communication skills!
Some other dictionary apps we covered earlier are here and here.
Conclusion
Bing Dictionary (E-C) is a really cool app to have on your Windows 8 device as it provides a fun filled and interactive way to learn Chinese with a very minimalistic interface. The only qualms that I have with the app is that it’s not an offline app, and requires an active internet connection at all times. Apart from that, it’s truly superb, both design as well as functionality-wise.