XiaoCiDian(小词典) Desktop: Learning Chinese language on the Mac OS
What’s XiaoCiDian(小词典)?
小词典 (xiǎo cídiǎn) are a few a small Chinese to English dictionary applications that are powered by CC-CEDICT. There are currently two versions of the dictionary application: the Desktop version and the iPhone™ / iPod™ touch version.
The dictionary applications are written by Rob Rohan; however, the CC-CEDICT dictionary itself is a community effort. The dictionary currently has over 75,000 words and phrases. These applications allow you to search that dictionary using Mandarin Pinyin, English, or Simplified Characters.
The desktop version, which integrates with the Mac OS X built-in dictionary, is a fantastic resource when reading Chinese on your Mac. Since 小词典 installs into the Mac OS X Leopard system wide dictionary, you have access to Chinese character definition throughout your whole system. From Safari™ to TextEdit™ to Pages™, you can control click (right click) on a character and choose “Lookup In Dictionary” to define the Chinese character or word. In addition, you can hover over a character use the hot key control+command+d to get an inline definition, and you can even use spotlight to define characters!
If you are studying Chinese and use a Mac with Mac OS X Leopard, 小词典 desktop is a great tool to add to your studying arsenal.
Installation
To install 小词典 Desktop
1. Download the installer, and save it to your desktop (or wherever you see fit).
2. Double click the file, it should expand into another file that looks like an open box.
3. Double click the open box icon, and follow the on screen instructions.
Once the application is installed, you can access the application in the following ways.
Usage
- In almost any application you can highlight a word or character then control+click (right click) and choose “Lookup in Dictionary”. Using this lookup process will show you a large, easy to see version of the characters (in both simplified and traditional form), how to pronounce the word or character in Mandarin, and give you a brief definition of the word.
- In almost any application you can hover your mouse over a simplified character or group of characters, and press control+command+d. Using this process you will get a pop in window that has the same information as the first technique, but smaller and faster. This is useful for quick lookups. However, when you use this technique, it will lookup the largest combination of characters that make a word. For example, if you try to lookup just 词 in 词典 using this technique, you’ll notice you cannot. It will alway lookup 词典 because that is the largest word it can make out of the characters. If you would like to force a lookup of a single character, use the first technique.
- Another way to lookup characters is to use the Mac’s Dictionary application itself. You can open this application by going into your Applications folder and double clicking on the application named Dictionary. Once the application is started, you can type simplified Chinese in the search box to find pronunciation and definition.If you do not know how to type in Chinese on your Mac, please see this blog post.
- Finally you can use spotlight to get a definition of a character (though it will not display the pinyin pronunciation). If you copy and paste chinese text into the spotlight search box the definition will be one of the top matches.
Download the XiaoCiDian(小词典) Desktop
