WaKan

WaKan is a freeware tool to assist in learning the Japanese and Chinese languages. It contains a character dictionary, a word dictionary, a vocabulary manager, a translation tool, a simple text editor and many other helpful functions, including the printing of flashcards.

One of the main goals of this project is to enable students to read Japanese or Chinese text with minimum knowledge of the language. You can paste Japanese or Chinese text from a website or a document into Wakan. While browsing through the text, Wakan displays not only the meaning of the word the cursor is on, but also displays information about characters, adds furigana to text and allows you to print the text with the furigana. When you encounter a word or character you would like to learn, you can add it into vocabulary or get to know additional information about it. When you enter some Japanese or Chinese text into the editor, Wakan automatically displays relevant dictionary entries and lets you choose the right character conversion. These features enable you to learn the language and build a vocabulary in a natural way: By coping with the real texts written in the real way (with all the characters) without becoming frustrated with the difficult writing system.