Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterburkimsher | Hacker News Reader

peterburkimsher

"I went to Google Translate to write my question and show him. Seeing what I was doing he said: “no, no, no, WeChat, WeChat”. I didn't get what he was saying at first. But he quickly showed me that he could type in Chinese on his phone, I would get the text in Chinese, long-press on it and get a menu that allowed me to translate it in English. And when I sent a message in English, he'd be able to translate it to Chinese."

That quote is buried deep in the article, but should be emphasised for anyone travelling in a Chinese-speaking country: WeChat is easier to use than Google Translate!

It also is worth emphasising for people developing iMessage, Skype, LINE, KakaoTalk, and other platforms, who seem to want to avoid "feature creep" by denying people this kind of functionality. Users like features.

If you're interested in learning Chinese, I wrote a program to do that, but I recommend chat-based translation tools like WeChat for temporary visitors.

Speaking about Skype, Microsoft should be ashamed of the low quality of this app compared to WeChat.

WeChat is snappy and feels very responsive. It works every time. With Skype it's always a hassle to connect (Android and Windows), the app feels very heavy (Android).

I just started to use chat apps recently and frankly I was expecting better from MS, since I had good experiences with all their other products.

Skype is frankly a disaster. Not only the personal app, also the Skype for Business app. Chatting works, but don't try to use any other functionality, since it breaks so easily.

But first (with great distance) on the list of failed Microsoft products is their accounts. Ever tried to login into msdn? Even our sysadmin who's is daily job is to get this right fails many times. The UX is so confusing and ambiguous, it's not funny. Everytime I need to deal with it I am seriously considering moving away from the whole MS ecosystem.

I agree that WeChat translate is much more convenient. But the WeChat translation is much worse than Google Translate in my experience.

On Android when you select text a menu pops up. Then press three dots and the menu changes. Now click "Translate", an overlay with translation pops up.

Is WeChat somehow more convenient than this? It sounds like the same number of steps.

Edit: I think I understand now. It will translate the text inside the edit box.

> Is WeChat somehow more convenient than this? It sounds like the same number of steps.

Yes because everyone uses WeChat. So it is quick to talk to people inside an app that is already used be everyone.

In WeChat you don't need to select the text. You just long-hold on the message bubble, and then tap 'translate'. And the translation comes up instantly, just below the bubble, and stays there in the message log. So even if you scroll down, when you scroll back up to that message, the translation will still show.

It also does not require a VPN or foreign sim card

What do you mean by learn chinese? Mandarin? Catonese? Fujianese? There are so many local dialects in China, saying chinese is equivalent to saying speak african, african isnt a language, it is a place with many languages used in it.

When people sat chinese, they usually mean mandarin. No big deal.

I'm learning Mandarin and Taiwanese. The site supports Cantonese, but I don't have a good data source (or local friends) to help me check it. See Advanced > Regional. Simplified/traditional conversion and bopomofo are all built-in.

http://pingtype.github.io

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