Hi everyone,

I just found this forum and wanted to drop a note to introduce a project that is tremendously useful for studying Chinese. We think it is actually revolutionary, being an intelligent cross-language annotation and translation system. The software supports a lot of different annotation and translation options, ranging from the complex (popups on mouseover with pinyin/definitions) to the simple (tone marks suspended over characters like in children's books).

http://www.adsotrans.com
http://www.newsinchinese.com

The first site is the homepage of the project (based in Beijing). The second is a language-learning blog that acts as a demonstration of what the software can do and provides constantly-updated annotated news items for Chinese students. Even beginners should be able to understand the news items. Questions are also welcome on the news site in the discussion spaces below each article.

Since we are also an open source development driven by volunteers, I wanted to warmly invite everything to come and help out if you think this is a good idea. Getting involved can be as easy as reading an article each day and adding a word or two that the database doesn't recognize. It will also do wonders for your ability to read Chinese, and give you very good vocabulary.

We have bilingual speakers curating the system and database, and working on the project, so you shouldn't feel afraid to ask questions on the site if there is something you don't understand.