qingjian-team/qingjian

Qingjian – AI‑enhanced Chinese Input Method

What it is – Qingjian (青简) is a desktop input‑method editor (IME) for Chinese that shows a translation of each candidate word in a foreign language (English, Japanese or Spanish). The translation is meant to help language learners pick up new vocabulary while they type.

How it works –

• You type pinyin as usual; the IME presents a list of Chinese candidate words.
• Next to each candidate a single translation (e.g., 开发 development) is displayed.
• A local “sentence model” runs on‑device; after a short pause it can re‑rank candidates or suggest whole‑sentence completions.
• All core functions – pinyin conversion, dictionary lookup, the local model, and usage statistics – run locally, so no keystrokes leave the computer unless you explicitly enable the optional cloud‑suggest feature.

Key features

• Multilingual glosses – real‑time translation of candidates into English, Japanese or Spanish; can be turned off.
• Rich input styles – full‑sentence input, short‑pinyin, spell‑check, double‑pinyin, Wubi, etc.
• Local statistics – daily, weekly and total keystroke counts plus a vocabulary log for the language you are learning.
• Privacy‑first – no account needed, all data stays on the device; optional cloud suggestion sends data only to a user‑provided AI endpoint.
• Cross‑platform – binaries for macOS 13+, Windows 10/11 and a manual Fcitx5 build for Linux.

Typical workflow

1. Install the app (download link on the website).
2. Open Qingjian, go to Preferences → General and pick the language you want to learn.
3. Type as you normally would; each candidate line shows the Chinese word and its foreign‑language translation.
4. Use the Statistics page to review how many words you typed and which foreign‑language terms you have encountered.

Who it’s for – Chinese speakers who want to improve a second language (English, Japanese, Spanish) without leaving their regular typing environment, and anyone who prefers an on‑device, privacy‑preserving IME.

License & contribution – The code is released under GPL‑3.0‑or‑later. Contribution guidelines and design docs are in the docs/ folder; issues and feature requests are handled via GitHub.

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All information above is taken directly from the repository’s README.