Navigating Chinese menu

[Richard Crowley]

I bought a $20 MP3 player that is probably OK.
I was looking for something that could play music/books from an SD card instead of uploading, etc.
And it comes with an FM radio, as well.  So looks great so far.

But the menu is operating in some kind of CJKV characters (presumably Chinese Han?)
Since it is a logogram language, I don't know even how to enter them to attempt online translation.

The gadget came with an English~ language instruction sheet which has no information about changing the menu language.

There are likely dozens of people where I work who speak one or more of those languages, so I am hoping I can find somebody who can navigate through the menu to find the language selection for me.   

[Richard Crowley]

Thanks, blue.  I didn't know I could enter handwriting.
I tried some characters but they are rather small and complex.
So I'm not sure I am entering them correctly as the translations are rather random.
I don't have any good way of capturing images of them.
I will ask around the office tomorrow.

[nidlaX]

If it's anything like what I've seen in the Amazon product photos, then you want to start on the home screen and select the icon with the wrench and screwdriver (bottom right). Then, look for a menu item labeled "??" to change the language.

EDIT: Since I can't display Chinese on the forum, I'll link you to Google instead: https://translate.google.com/#zh-CN/en/%E8%AF%AD%E8%A8%80

[Richard Crowley]

Thanks, nidlaX! I just started scrolling through all the sub-menus and found it!   

[nidlaX]

If it's anything like what I've seen in the Amazon product photos, then you want to start on the home screen and select the icon with the wrench and screwdriver (bottom right). Then, look for a menu item labeled "??" to change the language.

EDIT: Since I can't display Chinese on the forum, I'll link you to Google instead: https://translate.google.com/#zh-CN/en/%E8%AF%AD%E8%A8%80

Once at some point there was a thread testing CJK support of this forum. It turns out even IPA phonetic symbols won't display correctly, let along CJK.

Yeah well, we wouldn't wanna steal away all of 38hot's user base now would we?

[Tomorokoshi]

Just a test of Japanese:
?

[Tomorokoshi]

Just a test of Japanese:
?

That sure didn't work. It showed up properly in the preview.

[Richard Crowley]

Input the entire word or sentence. A single character makes no sense.

But I couldn't even get it to recognize the characters.
It kept displaying similar characters, but never the correct one.
Either I didn't understand what parts of the character are important to recognition,
or perhaps the screen is such low resolution, and the font so small, I didn't see the proper character?

[SL4P]

:::
So I'm not sure I am entering them correctly as the translations are rather random.
::

Aha... that's why Chinglish manuals are so much fun...
Translated:  Manuel is fun better when much goodle online.

You maybe even be able to drag a jpg image of the symbol onto Google image search or google translate

[amyk]

If you can recognise pieces of the characters, this could be useful:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals

If you spend enough time trying to navigate the (very interesting) Chinese Internet, especially the electronics sites, you'll start recognising some characters. This is likely to be the first.

[m98]

Have you tried the google translate app? It just does live character recognition and translation. Should be good enough to get to the right menu.

[suicidaleggroll]

Have you tried the google translate app? It just does live character recognition and translation. Should be good enough to get to the right menu.

I've used this before to navigate a restaurant menu in Peru (Spanish).  It worked pretty well!

[dannyf]

Much easier for you to take a picture and ask people what it means.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

If you install Cangjie as keyboard input method by choosing Chinese Traditional Hong Kong (not simplified Penyin!) language support in Windows and then try to "unroll" your symbol from top to bottom left to right like described here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method you will see symbol that you are looking for in a list of choices. Copy paste to google translate and voila.
I typed "MC" - M for horizontal bar and C for stroke going down. First symbol that came out is for "?" (face). So you don't need to know Chinese to enter Chinese symbols.

[coppice]

If you install Cangjie as keyboard input method by choosing Chinese Traditional Hong Kong (not simplified Penyin!) language support in Windows and then try to "unroll" your symbol from top to bottom left to right like described here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method you will see symbol that you are looking for in a list of choices. Copy paste to google translate and voila.
I typed "MC" - M for horizontal bar and C for stroke going down. First symbol that came out is for "?" (face). So you don't need to know Chinese to enter Chinese symbols.

Cangjie is a very unintuitive input method, that Chinese people take ages to learn. Instead of following the stroke order rules properly it is a mass of inconsistencies you need to learn by brute force. Outside Hong Kong it isn't very popular. Someone who can't read Chinese at all will get a lot farther trying to write the characters with the handwriting input method on Google translate (or their phone). Even if you don't know the stroke order rules to draw the character in the right order, I still think you are going to do a lot better with that than with Cangie.

[Richard Crowley]

Well, now trying to use it for a couple of weeks, I find that it is very nice to be able to load and organize things on the SD card in my computer, and then just plug it into the player.

However, the User Interface (even in English!) is to terrible that I'm glad it cost <$20 because I am ready to abandon it.  I have never got the feel for exactly how long to hold down a button to engage the desired action. It takes 10 times as long to do something as it would on a more user-friendly UI.  VERY disappointed.