HanCam Pinyin: Chinese hover reader with meaning

Point at Chinese on a web page: see the pinyin with tone marks and the meaning in your language, worked out on your computer.

Point at Chinese on any web page and HanCam Pinyin shows a small card with the word, its pinyin with tone marks, and what it means in your own language. A second line gives the pinyin of the whole sentence. HOW TO SWITCH IT ON Click the HanCam icon in the toolbar. That switches hover reading on for the page you are on (the icon shows ON). Then point at Chinese text. You can also use the keyboard shortcut: Alt+Shift+H, or Control+Shift+H on a Mac (change it at chrome://extensions/shortcuts). Switch it off in the same menu or with the shortcut; leaving the page switches it off too. While the card is open: • Shift holds the card in place and adds the meaning of the whole sentence. Shift again lets it go. • Esc closes it. WHAT YOU GET • Pinyin read from the word and its sentence, so characters with more than one reading come out right in context: 银行 yínháng, 行走 xíngzǒu, 长大 zhǎngdà, 长度 chángdù, 重新 chóngxīn. • Simplified and Traditional Chinese. • Tone marks (nǐ hǎo) or tone numbers (ni3 hao3). • The meaning in your language: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Russian, Danish and about 25 more. • Works in light and dark pages and in frames of the same site. WHERE THE MEANING COMES FROM The meaning comes from the translator built into Google Chrome, which runs on your computer. It needs Chrome 138 or later on Windows, macOS, Linux or ChromeOS. The first time you use a language, Chrome downloads its language pack once (the HanCam menu has a button for it); after that it works offline. Without it, or on a page that blocks Chrome's translator, the card shows the pinyin only and says why. The meaning is a translation of the word, not a dictionary entry, so short words can read oddly; hold the card with Shift to see the whole sentence translated. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No account, no sign-in, no ads, no analytics, no tracking. • The extension sends nothing anywhere. The text you point at is read and converted on your computer and is not stored. • It only runs on a page after you click the icon or press the shortcut, and it asks for no access to your websites. LIMITS Pinyin is right most of the time, not always. Text in input fields, images, PDFs and Chrome's own pages is not read, and frames from other websites are skipped. FROM THE MAKERS OF HANCAM HanCam for iPhone and iPad does the same for printed Chinese: point the camera at a menu, a sign or a package and read the characters, the pinyin and the meaning. https://blaris.com/hancam/ Made by Blaris ApS, Denmark.