PowerWord () is a collection of

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

, English and bilingual

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...

and supporting

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

, published on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Kingsoft Kingsoft Corporation () is a Chinese software company based in Beijing. Kingsoft operates four subsidiaries: Seasun for video game development, Cheetah Mobile for mobile internet apps, Kingsoft Cloud for cloud storage platforms, and WPS for of ...

. Originally produced for the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

platform, it is now available for

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, iPhone,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

for

Nokia smartphones Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

, and is available online. The CD-ROM often prominently carries the label "CIBA" as well as Chinese characters.

Basic usage

The

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

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 Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conve ...

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

The 2002 version of PowerWord contained some

obscene An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...

English words as default translations of common Chinese terms. PowerWord corrected this in later versions, but many users failed to upgrade, so the obscene English words were commonly seen in Chinese shop

signage Signage is the design or use of signs and symbols to communicate a message. A signage also means signs ''collectively'' or being considered as a group. The term ''signage'' is documented to have been popularized in 1975 to 1980. Signs are any ...

as late as 2007. Translations in the PowerWord dictionaries are in general very brief, and a word's full connotations are not always explained. In some newer versions of PowerWord this situation can be improved by selecting better dictionaries from the main program window. 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

mojibake Mojibake ( ja, 文字化け; , "character transformation") is the garbled text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, ofte ...

d when pasted, and the resulting text must be explicitly re-interpreted as

GB 2312 is a key official character set of the People's Republic of China, used for Simplified Chinese characters. GB2312 is the registered internet name for EUC-CN, which is its usual encoded form. ''GB'' refers to the Guobiao standards (国家标准 ...

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 Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

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 American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

" (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 Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

* 14 dictionaries dealing with specialist vocabulary in various fields of

science and technology Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...

* 10 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

* 9 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of

transportation Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, ...

* 5 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

(including

Traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of action ...

and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

) * 11 dictionaries dealing with the specialist vocabularies of various aspects of energy production and similar resources (mining, water) * 6 other specialist dictionaries on

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starti ...

forestry Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, planting, using, conserving and repairing forests, woodlands, and associated resources for human and environmental benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands. Th ...

and

firefighting Firefighting is the act of extinguishing or preventing the spread of unwanted fires from threatening human lives and destroying property and the environment. A person who engages in firefighting is known as a firefighter. Firefighters typically ...

Controversy

In 2007, PowerWord was blamed by a furniture company for a racial slur printed on the label of a couch. 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 In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...

brown". The company has corrected this in the 2007 release of PowerWord.

References

External links

iCIBA
English version of the dictionary.
iCIBA
online version of the dictionary.

listing various versions, downloads, and purchase information. {{in lang, zh Dictionary software