PowerWord

Infobox Software
name = PowerWord



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developer = Kingsoft
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operating system = Microsoft Windows
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language = Chinese
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genre = Dictionary software
license = Various
website = [http://cp.iciba.com/ Product page]

PowerWord (zh-cpl|c=金山詞霸|p=jīnshān cíbà|l=Kingsoft Word Master) is a collection of Chinese, English and bilingual dictionaries and supporting proprietary software, published on CD-ROM in China by Kingsoft, which claims to have 20 million users including 50,000 organisations. It runs only on the Microsoft Windows platform. The CD-ROM often prominently carries the label "CIBA" as well as Chinese characters.

Basic usage

The user interface can be set to be either Chinese or English. The installer seems to use the system default location.

Pointing the mouse at any word on the screen cause a small box to pop up with a brief definition and links to access a more expanded definition in the main program, to search the Web for that word using the company's search engine, or to hear the word spoken. The main program contains a text box at the top, into which may be typed (or pasted) an English or Chinese-character word or phrase to access the dictionary entries. If an exact match is not found, then the nearest entry is shown.

A speech synthesizer is available to read many of the English entries (in an American accent) by clicking on the small loudspeaker. There are natural recordings of some words, while others are synthesized. The Chinese words can also be spoken by using recordings of single syllables (which means there is a problem with fluency when reading words of more than one syllable).

Problems and criticism

Translations in the PowerWord dictionaries are in general very brief, and a word's full connotations are not always explained. The situation can be improved if user open the main program window and pick good dictionaries (Fact|date=April 2008 - it is not clear how to do this, at least not in the 2002 edition).

Text can be copied from a dictionary and pasted elsewhere. However, when running the 2002 edition on non-Chinese versions of Windows (even ones that are Unicode-aware), the characters become mojibaked when pasted, and the resulting text must be explicitly re-interpreted as GB2312 using a character set translation utility. This problem does not exist when pasting text into the application.

The font size of the program cannot be changed, which is an accessibility problem.

Coverage

Because the translations in PowerWord's dictionaries are brief, the application works best when dealing with well-defined, unambiguous technical words rather than normal words. It is supplied with several additional dictionaries of technical words in specific fields.

The choice of fields is biased toward areas of high commercial profit, as can be seen from the list of dictionaries below.

List of dictionaries

The 2002 edition of the CD-ROM contains a total of 83 dictionaries, as follows:

* The basic dictionary, which is always installed with the program (the others can be selected or de-selected in the advanced installation options).
* Eight additional general-purpose dictionaries: "Kingsoft Detailed English-Chinese Dictionary", "A Modern English-Chinese Comprehensive Dictionary", "American Heritage Dictionary" (English-English), "An English-Chinese Graphic Dictionary", "A Senior Chinese Dictionary", "A Great International Standard Dictionary of Chinese Characters", and "American Heritage Dictionary (two-direction)"
* Eight "computer and communication" dictionaries (including the "Longman English-Chinese Computer Dictionary" and the "Longman Chinese-English Computer Dictionary")
* 11 dictionaries dealing with specialist vocabulary in various fields of industry and manufacturing
* 14 dictionaries dealing with specialist vocabulary in various fields of science and technology
* 10 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of business
* 9 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of transportation
* 5 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of medicine (including Traditional Chinese medicine and psychology)
* 11 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of energy production and similar resources (mining, water)
* 6 other specialist dictionaries on architecture, agriculture/husbandry/forestry and firefighting

Controversy

In 2007, PowerWord was blamed by a furniture company for a racial slur printed on the label of a couch. [cite web | url=http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/04/19/canada.couch.ap/ | title= Chinese translation error blamed for slur on sofa label | publisher= CNN | accessdate=2007-04-20 ] When the Chinese characters for "dark brown" (simplified: 黑褐, pinyin: hei1 he4) are typed into a version of Kingsoft's Chinese-English translation software, it produces, among other translations, the words "nigger brown". [ [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18228652/ Offensive furniture label traced to China firm] ] The company has corrected this in the 2007 release of PowerWord. [cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/racial/business/sofa.asp|title=Hue & Cry|last=Mikkelson|first=Barbara|date=2007-05-15|publisher=snopes.com|accessdate=2008-06-24]

See also

* Wenlin Software for Learning Chinese

References

External links

* [http://www.iciba.com/ iCIBA] , online version of the dictionary. zh
* [http://cp.iciba.com/ Product page] , listing various versions, downloads, and purchase information. zh
* [http://www.javvin.com/powerwordEnglishManual.pdf English translation of user manual for version 5.5]