DLTool homepage

Dictionary Lookup Tool is a small program designed to help Chinese and Japanese language learners read web pages. It is designed for Windows 2000/XP, and is powered by the CEDICT and EDICT dictionaries.

Usage:

When DLTool is loaded, it will automatically look up and try to translate whatever text is on the clipboard. In the screenshot below, the user has selected a word and copied it to the clipboard by pressing CTL-C (or Edit-Copy or right-click-copy etc). DLTool automatically looks up the word and displays all matching entries, with exact matches displayed first.

Screenshot of DLTool

And again in Japanese...

Srceenshot of DLTool looking up japanese text

Languages supported:

Select a language by choosing it from the "Dictionary" pull-down menu

  • Chinese (traditional)
  • Chinese (simplified)
  • Japanese

Requirements:

Windows 2000/XP
  • Microsoft .NET Framework. If you don't have it already, you can download it via Microsoft Windows Update. You will know if you don't have it when you get an error saying something like "The dynamic link library mscoree.dll could not be found.."
  • International Language support for Chinese (both traditional and simplified) as well as Japanese. If you don't have it, you can install it using the CD that came with your computer.

Download:

dltool-install-1.2.exe
(2.7 MB) Windows installation file. Contains everything you need to run the program.

dltool-1.2.zip
(2.6 MB) contains the executable (dltool.exe) and the dictionaries. Download this if you don't like installers.

dltool-src-1.2.zip
(49 KB) contains only the source code. Dictionary files are not included in the source. You must have a C# compiler in order for this to be of any use.

News:

October 5, 2005
Minor bug fixes. No new functionality. Updated CEDICT dictionary file to Oct. 1 release.
April 26, 2005
Support has been added for the Unicode CEDICT. For Chinese lookup, users can now...
  • Look up both traditional and simplified characters, without having to switch dictionary files.
  • Find the simplified equivalent of a traditional character, or vice versa, by displaying both characters.
In addition,
  • Window dimensions are now remembered by "Save options."
  • Latest EDICT and CEDICT dictionary files are included.
December 13, 2003
A bunch of changes. Most mentionable is the 1.0 release. I figure this has been around long enough without anyone telling me it doesn't work that I can call it stable now. New features and changes are:
  • Added lookup mode Pronounciation. If you happen to have some pinyin or kana, you can copy that to the clipboard and search for words with the matching pronounciation.
  • Added enable/disable button. Just stops the auto-lookup in case you want to do something else without looking up text.
  • Got rid of the CTRL-? keyboard shortcuts for switching between match modes. They were stupid anyway. You can still switch quickly with the keyboard by using the ALT-O-? style..
  • Added the ability to import dictionary files (presumably for other languages). They have to be in the EDICT-format, but that's the only requirement. If you've been thinking about adding other languages to DLTool, this is your chance =P

Links:

CEDICT
CEDICT is the (somewhat) freely distributed Chinese-English dictionary used by DLTool.
EDICT
EDICT is the (somewhat) freely distributed Japanese-English dictionary used by DLTool.
CEL
CEL is the tool that I based this program on. It offers pretty much identical functionality for older versions of Windows. CEL is Chinese-English only, though.

Please direct comments and suggestions to ashuang[at]users[dot]sourceforge[dot]net

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This page last updated October 5, 2005