Pleco sucks (as a dictionary)! Pleco is the most popular dictionary for learners of Chinese. I use Pleco for its clip reader tool, and to look up words I already know but forgot how to write. But as a

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Alan

Pleco sucks (as a dictionary)!

Pleco is the most popular dictionary for learners of Chinese. I use Pleco for its clip reader tool, and to look up words I already know but forgot how to write. But as a dictionary it's just awful, and its paid version is not better.

Here are the results for "slam". Any English speaker would think of "slam a door" (摔门) but look at the garbage Pleco turns up:

满贯：To reach a perfect score in Mah-Jong

全胜：To achieve total victory

碰碰：(onom.) bang bang

乓：(onom.) bang

灌篮：Slam dunk

猛力：With all one's force

猛撞：To smash into

关门：To close (a door)

扣篮：slam dunk

如樽：slam dunk

大满贯：grand slam

急刹车：slam on the brakes

爆扣：slam dunk

李娜：A famous Chinese tennis player

抱摔：body slam

赶紧：slam on the brakes

飞身：slam dunk

FIVE words for "slam dunk" and not a single word for "slam a door"? Why does anyone take this app seriously as a dictionary?

Comments · 7

As I said, I appreciate its reader "clipboard" app. Basically Pleco is a shortcut to Google Translate, but nothing more.

I'm just amazed that no dependable offline app exists for learners of Chinese. Dictionaries for Chinese English-learners aren't a good substitute. For example, 欧路,a wonderfully complete Chinese dictionary, defines "slam" as 砰地关门. An explanation, yes, a functional Chinese equivalent, no. No Chinese native speaker would say 我的老婆生气，所以砰地关门！

You asked me what free dictionaries I've added. Youdao, Nciku, Oulu, Jinshan. So far none have remotely met my standards for context as a Chinese learner. I used to use jukuu.com but that website's been down for w while, a huge shame.

I'll check out ADS!

Well we don't have any alternatives out there and for me without pleco I don't know how to survive especially when dealing with a language exchange partner.

However, I do agree that sometimes it is not great. It was completely useless when I looked for "to stall a car", because it was giving me results for little shops.

I thought to slam a door was 把門甩上？Did you accidentally write the wrong character?

Thanks for the info! Are those English-Chinese, or Chinese-English? The ADS has a lot of entries, but the definitions are super short (which can be desirable in some cases). I haven’t bothered installing any English-Chinese dictionaries — the search result I got came up as a reverse look-up in the Chinese-English dictionaries. BTW, if you enter something in Cantonese, it'll find it — pretty cool. I know they do have available free add-on dictionaries for various languages in either direction, but for the occasional English to Chinese look-up you have in mind, I just use Google.

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