How to use Dictation

Support & Feedback Forum
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hi there

im new to this, but i just tried to use the Dictation function to test myself on Chinese from hearing the words, so say for example, i clicked on the play audio and the word pronounce was the word for "i or myself’ so i typed in the term "I’ and click entered, but it tells me i have it wrong but their answer they provided me had “I” in it as well, so am i doing something wrong. Am i just not understanding how to use this function. i have tried many words with this dictation function and i put in the English term words that would represent what i hear, is that incorrect?? im getting wrong answers for all of them.

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The way dictation works is that you are supposed to type in the word that you hear. It does not check your hint, it simply tests your ability to recognize and spell the term.

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how are we meant to type the chinese term in if i don’t know how to type in chinese

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Sorry if I’m not being of much help, but I’m not sure what you mean.
Do you mean that you don’t have Chinese fonts enabled on your computer?
Or, do you mean you don’t know how to type in pinyin?
Or, do you mean you don’t know how to type simplified characters?
Or, something else?

If you could make it clearer, I might be able to be more helpful.

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i don’t have chinese fonts enabled on my computer, at the same time i don’t know how to type in simplified characters, i have tried typing in the pinyin, but they still say i got the wrong answer, so i thought i need to type in the english meaning term but thats not right either. But i did try copy and paste the chinese character from another window and paste it in the answer and that worked. so it looks like it requires the actual chinese character put in the answer field in order to get it right. but i don’t know how to type in chinese and i don’t have a chinese keyboard

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You should enable Chinese fonts on your computer - you don’t need a physical Chinese keyboard. Which Windows version are you using? For example, Windows 7 comes with Chinese fonts. Is there a reason why you can’t enable both traditional and simplified fonts on your computer? (or you just don’t know how?)

I searched for a link that will get you typing in Chinese, but unfortunately, it only gives simplified, not traditional:(
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/ime.html

If you can enable the fonts on your computer, you only need to type pinyin without tone marks to get the characters ie. type nihao instead of nǐhǎo.

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im using a macbook so im running apple operating system

8

so now we know…
[edited]
Good luck.

9

thanks Julie. you are awesome

10

不客氣。(But I’d much rather type it as 不客气。Hehe!)

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@tildy69 - Just type “how to type chinese with mac os” into Google and check out the results. There should be lots of info there including youtube videos.

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