Translation systems can provide the gist of the original text, but still do not provide a natural, complete translation. So, I wouldn't recommend trying to carry out business communication or pen pal exchanges using them. The free options for English/Chinese translation software are also very limited. In most situations, you still need a human.

One page that lists several different translation systems is Chinese Software Digest. Another page in Chinese is at China Computerworld. Other possibilities are EV Dict, Alexander Chinese to English Software, RoboWord English-Chinese Software, TransPerfect, or Systran, but I haven't tried them myself.

If you want a portable translator, try the Besta Handheld Translator.

An on-line English/Chinese automatic translation I know of is the IBM English/Chinese translation engine, where all the instructions are in English. AltaVista's Babelfish also now supports translation to and from Chinese from English. Another possibility is the on-line Gist-in-Time System, which is incorporated into Netscape 6.

English/Chinese MT Software

• CITAC
• Dr. Eye
• TransWhiz
• Systran Profession Premium
• Translation.net: One place to buy above programs

English to Chinese MT Web Services

• IBM AlphaWorks
• Gist-in-Time System
• Babelfish
• ReadWorld
• EWTransLite
• WorldLingo

Chinese to English MT Web Services

• Babelfish
• Transtar
• Amikai
• Netat
• WorldLingo

Links of Interest

• Taipei Times Article on Chinese to English MT Companies
• Otek's Chinese/English-English/Chinese Translation System
• CITAC Machine Translation System
• Good summary of Issues in Chinese to English MT
• Chinese to English Translation of Interrogatives
• Paper on Systran's Chinese/English MT Efforts
• BehaviorTran English/Chinese MT System
• Silc Research Center
• THCEMT Chinese-English Machine Translation
• Article on Machine Translation (in GB-encoded Chinese)
• The Chinese Information Processing Open Laboratory (CIPOL; Beijing) of CCID, Ministry of Electronics Industry (MEI), is interested in technical cooperation with foreign corporations via the Internet. CIPOL has developed commercially usable Chinese language software products, including Huanyu Tong Chinese-English machine translation, bidirectional dictionaries, text correction, and Chinese full-text information retrieval. Intelligent text classification is in development, and other projects can be considered. CIPOL is also interested in providing human translators for technical manuals, and also data entry in Chinese or English. [Y.Q. , comp.ai, 26Oct97.] (Their collaborations have included a Sino-Japan joint project and ties with the Apple-ISS Research Center in Singapore and IBM China Research Center in Beijing.)
  From The Computists Communique