I just have to say that the audio pronunciation guide for Mandarin Chinese is pretty awful sounding. It's very robotic and generally unclear. I understand that this is a common problem for online dictionaries with audio pronunciation tools, especially when words are pronounced together in a sentence, but I find that other sites have done well with it (most notably Nciku.com) and Google's English and French pronunciations are not bad. To compare, listen to the Google pronunciation of 大厦 (Dàshà):
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=&ie=UTF-8&text=%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%A6&sl=zh-CN&tl=en#en|zh-CN|%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%A6 And then the pronunciation for Nciku (you have to click the green speaker icon for 上海大厦): http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%A6/7220 Quite a difference. I can't even understand the Google pronunciation with its robotic slur, but the Nciku pronunciation is exceptionally clear and rhythmically natural. Improving this feature would greatly complement Google's translation tool for Mandarin Chinese, which is itself not too bad, and would actually make the service helpful for Mandarin learners. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "General" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-translate-general?hl=en.
