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What are the most frequent words I'm likely to encounter when using a computer in Chinese.

Stuff like file menu, cut, copy, paste, edit, properties, ok, cancel, back, refresh, save, print etc...

Just want to learn a few so I don't get lost everytime I have to use a Chinese computer.

Is there a list somewhere?

What are the 250 most common menu items / words I am likely to encounter when using a Chinese computer?

Samuel Parsonage
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    Well, this list includes both terms in mainland and Taiwan. Just a little too comprehensive. You may rank them into your "Top 250" list. – Stan Mar 27 '14 at 16:54
  • There are many differences between the Mainland vocab and the TW vocab when it comes to computer terms. – user58955 Mar 27 '14 at 17:21
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    In my case, if you use the same version of software or OS, you could probably dope out the meaning, according to your habit, the shortcut key, the position of menu item, and so on. –  Mar 28 '14 at 01:28
  • The best way to familiarize with computer vocabulary is to get yourself a Chinese computer. This helped me when learning a couple of languages. – agriprop Mar 28 '14 at 06:35
  • Traditional Chinese (TW), Traditional Chinese (HK), Simplified Chinese (PRC) have quite different computer terminologies. However, just type it into google translate, the answer is normally correct since in IT, most translations are quite straight forward. – user1228520 Mar 28 '14 at 06:46
  • haha... I tried switching my phone to 中文, confused the hell out of me! The setting affected the apps too. Ended up having to switch it back when I found out I couldn't do important things quickly enough. – Samuel Parsonage Mar 29 '14 at 14:17
  • hmmm seems that link doesn't work – Samuel Parsonage Mar 29 '14 at 14:40
  • @Stan IMO it's worth putting the link as an answer. – leesei Apr 04 '14 at 03:22
  • @leesei OK. As I haven't seen a better answer :) – Stan Apr 04 '14 at 09:02
  • Get the Zhongwen extension (popup translation) on a browser, surf to a Chinese website and mouse over all the peripheral links and buttons that do things. You'll learn a lot and it's practical. – Steve Apr 07 '14 at 23:39
  • to remember most menu items, options, settings in English & their positions, and then switch O/S language to Chinese. – Daniel Yang Aug 25 '17 at 04:50
  • Try this list – shawn_xu Feb 11 '21 at 04:01
  • Check out this tech-related vocabulary list Hope you'll find it useful. – Alixy1 Dec 28 '21 at 07:56

6 Answers6

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  • computer - 电脑
  • internet - 因特网
  • software - 软件
  • program - 程序
  • Windows - 视窗
  • Mac - 苹果（电脑）
  • Apple - 苹果 （公司）
  • Microsoft - 微软 （公司）
  • Google - 谷歌
  • file - 文件
  • copy - 复制
  • save - 保存
  • delete - 删除
  • open - 打开
  • close - 关闭
  • click - 点击
  • double-click - - 双击
  • turn on - 打开
  • turn off - 关掉
  • plug in - 插入
  • image - 图片
  • video - 视频
  • connect - 链接
  • network - 网络
  • wireless - 无线
  • email - 电子邮件
  • inbox - 邮箱
  • browser - 浏览器
  • URL / Internet address - 网址
  • send an email - 发邮件
  • reply - 回复
  • forward - (v.) 转发
  • chat - 聊天
  • hard disk - 硬盘
  • keyboard - 键盘
  • drive (n.) - 磁盘
  • screen - 屏幕
  • mouse - 鼠标
  • USB drive - U盘
  • crash - (v.) 电脑死机
  • broken - (adj.) 怀了
  • desktop (computer) - 台式机
  • laptop (computer) - 笔记本
  • desktop - 桌面 (means: computer background)
  • icon - 图标
  • Excel - Excel （软件）(no translation)
  • Word - Word （软件）(no translation)
  • Powerpoint - 简报 （软件）(more commonly called PPT; no translation)
  • spreadsheet - 表格
  • Word document - Word文档
  • slideshow - 幻灯片

:) Self-compiled.

emf
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menu - 菜单
cut - 剪切
copy - 复制
paste - 粘贴
edit - 编辑
properties - 属性
ok - OK / 好的
cancel - 取消
back - 返回
refresh - 刷新
save - 保存
print - 打印

Sam Ye
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Institute of Information & Computing Machinery is maintaining a comprehensive list:

電腦名詞譯名

which cites standards by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan and by Authorized Committee of Science and Technology of PRC. This may offer some useful information.

Stan
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  • that's indeed very comprehensive. a good reference, but not particularly useful for studying. – Samuel Parsonage Apr 06 '14 at 09:56
  • Thumbs up for that link! I used it quite a lot while translating software from English to Chinese. That and a decent dictionary covers almost everything! – Olle Linge Apr 08 '14 at 02:17
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http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/topics/topics.html

This is a collection of pages from University of Maine at Farmington I think. It's a good summary of computer/tech/internet related words. Mouse over 电脑 at the top left and the following topics will show:

  • Computer Terms 计算机词语 ji4suan4ji1 ci2yu3
  • Using Windows 视窗基准 shi4chuang1ji1zhun3
  • Programming 程序设计 cheng2xu4she4ji4
  • Internet WWW 网络 Wang3luo4
  • Keyboard 键盘 jian4pan2
  • Computer Games 电脑游戏 dian4nao3 you2xi4
  • Internet shopping 网购 Wang3gou4
  • Computer equipment 计算机设备 ji4suan4ji1 she4bei4
  • Computer problems 计算机问题 ji4suan4ji1 wen4ti2
  • Brand names 品牌 pin3pai2
  • Social networking 社交网络 she4jiao1 wang3luo4
  • E-mail 电子邮件 dian4zi3you2jian4

Some samples from the Using Windows page:

  • click and drag 单击及拖动 dan1ji1 ji2 tuo1dong4
  • You need to unzip that file. 你需要解压缩那个文件。Ni3 xu1yao4 jie3ya1suo1 na4 ge4 wen2jian4.
  • default; to give tacit consent, to give tacit approval 默认 mo4ren4
  • extension (computer -- after the dot) 后缀名 hou4zhui4ming2
  • file format 文件格式 wen2jian4 ge2shi4
  • icon 图标 tu2biao1
  • print preview 打印御览 da3yin4 yu4lan3
  • status bar 状态条 zhuang4tai4tiao2

A deep dive way to learn terms is to go to a discussion board, the more specific the better. Here, you also get to see acronyms/slang native Chinese speakers use as well.

Steve
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  • Interesting site! I found the design quite horrible and it's hard to navigate, but it's really cool that most phrases and vocabulary are recorded by more than one speaker. – Olle Linge Apr 08 '14 at 02:22
  • Yeah, bad design, but the content is good. The space between each character is annoying too. – Steve Apr 08 '14 at 10:16
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Another source is directly looking up internationalization of computer software into chinese. It's slightly more limited vocab than the enormous iicm.org.tw one, but unfortunately still not sorted by frequency, so a bit overwhelming.

If you go on github and search for "i18n zh-cn" you may find a few: jupyter notebook discourse telegram

I also switched my computer over to chinese, however since you can't really "copy" out of a menu item, it's time consuming to copy. So I thought I'd go straight to the source, the internationalization files.

Update: Also, if you have the Pleco smartphone app, it has "screen reader" function which will pull out Chinese words on your screen, and you can then add them to your Pleco flashcards (and/or export those)! Unfortunately the screen reader function does not work on the System Settings menus, but it's perfect for the settings within apps etc.

orangenarwhals
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I think my answer may not be what you are looking for... but your best bet is to go into control panel and change language setting instead to learn a new language.

user3019766
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