Shout-out: "Pleco" Chinese Dictionary for iOS

A quick shout-out to the makers of one of my favourite applications for the iPhone and iPad.

I’m approaching the end of my time in university, studying Sinology and Business and this application has been of great help along the way.

Anybody who needs a reliable Chinese-English (English-Chinese) dictionary should try Pleco. It’s a universal application with tons of useful features in a well thought-out user interface. The entire application is modular, so you can add features to perfectly suit your needs. Their forums provide great support for anything Pleco-related and the staff is always open for suggestions and feature requests.

Some of my favourite features are:

  • A highly customisable flashcard system.
  • Live-OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for Chinese characters.
  • Full-screen handwriting recognition.
  • Stroke order diagrams (especially useful for long form characters).
  • And last but not least: Amazing dictionaries, some of which aren’t available in digital for anywhere else.

The last thing I want to mention is, that they offer substantial student discounts.

Alex Hoffmann @mangochutney