ZKanji Portable

ZKanji Portable is a software utility whose purpose is to help people learn and practice the Japanese language, which comes bundled with information pertaining to each kanji symbols.

This is the portable edition of ZKanji, which means that you are not required to go through the installation process. Moreover, the Windows registry and hard drive are not going to be updated with new entries without your approval, and no remnants are going to be left behind after its removal from the disk.

Another important aspect is that you can easily take ZKanji Portable anywhere with you and run it on any computer you have been granted access to, by simply copying the program files to an external data device, such as USB thumb drive.

The GUI you come across is not particularly appealing and not very intuitive, as it presents an array of information in the main window. It is comprised of multiple panes enabling you to view all sorts of groups, words both in English and Japanese, several boxes, a few buttons and a menu bar. As a result, novice users will have a pretty hard time trying to navigate this application.

This tool enables you to access Japanese to English and English to Japanese dictionaries, as well as use some pretty complex search functions, so that you can find particular words easier and faster. In addition to that, you can practice Hiragana and Katakana syllables through interactive games, bring up kanji information, such as ON and KUN readings, meaning, similar kanji, what it can be part of, number of strokes and even a video to show you how to properly make the strokes.

Words can be added to a vocabulary and sorted in groups, while a Clipboard manager is also incorporated with an auto-translate option. You can filter the dictionary according to a really large number of aspects, such as relation to speaker/listener, style of speech, fields of use, verb types and adjective types. New words can be inserted and you can also edit them.

To conclude, ZKanji Portable is a pretty efficient and reliable piece of software, yet its interface seems a bit cluttered for novice users. Nevertheless, it does not put a strain on the computer’s performance, the response time is very good and our tests did not reveal any hangs, bugs or freezes.