Type Chinese: Typing in Chinese with NJStar

Learning to type in Chinese (contrary to what most think) is incredibly simple, but if you don't use the right software it can be extremely difficult. Today I'm going to talk about my favorite word processor, one I believe every beginner should use; NJSTAR.


南极星（nán jí xīng）, or NJStar, is a company that creates word processing software for Asian languages. I like NJStar because of its many, very helpful features. Aside from the fact that it provides a simple word processing using Pinyin for input, it also contains a pop up dictionary. Move your cursor over a word or phrase, and definitions for that particular word or phrase appear next to it. It also has a decent English to Chinese dictionary. If you type out a word in English and select "Dictionary" from the "Tools" drop-down menu, you will get a list of equivalent terms in order of likely relevance. NJStar has multiple input methods from Standard and Online Pinyin, to CantonPinyin and other types of romanized input methods. This program is great for typing and editing essays and other documents, as well as learning to read text that you find online that is new to you. Copy and paste any text that you encounter on your computer into an NJStar document, and using NJStar's conversion tool, you can have Pinyin appear above or below each individual character. Aside from these useful figures, this program also comes with a list of some of the most commonly used idiomatic expressions. NJStar really has it all. The only downside to it is that its input features are limited to its word processing interface. If you want to type Chinese into text fields online or enter characters into documents in another program, you will either have to copy and paste from NJStar, or use another Chinese character input method (NJStar is actually just a word processor, NOT an input method).


NJStar is without a doubt my favorite word processor as well as one of the tools that I feel is most essential to my learning process. If you are new to learning Chinese, or are just looking for a decent word processing tool for an Asian language, make sure you obtain this program.

In my next post, I will talk about Windows IME, which provides an actual input method for entering Chinese characters in programs run on Windows OS. I hope this was helpful to you all. Again, thanks for reading.

-Mike Redus
睿达思