I'm currently translating two scientific texts that I need for my Master's Thesis from Chinese to German. It's difficult stuff, because both texts deal with concepts about internet memes and often feature fairly new words that haven't yet found their way into dictionaries and sometimes aren't even used widely enough to have reliable translations in user generated online dictionaries.
At times like this I sit here hugging my iPhone or iPad because they run Pleco. It's an application for learners and users of Chinese that I've been using since I started studying sinology (back then on a Palm Treo 650).
This piece of software has made my life so much easier, I really don't want to imagine studying Chinese without it. Lately the built-in document reader and the plethora of paid and free dictionaries have become the main reasons for my love of this application.
It's worth every cent and available for both iOS devices and a number of Android devices.
If you're a student of Chinese and don't use this software I consider you a masochist.
