Formatted Chinese

Romanize and translate Chinese text without leaving your notes. Select some text, run a command, and get it back as a formatted study layout — characters with Jyutping, Yale, or pinyin, and a translation alongside.

Built for Cantonese learners first. Most romanization tools are Mandarin-only, and the ones that handle Jyutping don't translate or lay anything out. Mandarin is supported too.

What it does

• Format selection — replaces the selected text with the formatted result
• Format entire note — does the same for the whole note
• Romanization: Jyutping, Yale, Yale (tone numbers), or pinyin
• Layouts: stacked lines, vertical split, horizontal split, three-section, translation only
• Targets: English, Chinese (Traditional / Simplified / Hong Kong), Italian, Japanese, and more
• Toggles for separators, character alignment, word compounds, and source/translation order

Requirements and network use

This plugin is a client for a hosted service. It does not romanize or translate anything locally.

• No account needed to start. Install, enable, and it works — you get the same free daily allowance the website gives an anonymous visitor. An API key from formattedchinese.com/account raises that limit; sign-up is free and optional.
• Your text is sent over the network. When you run a command, the selected text — or the entire note — is sent to formattedchinese.com to be translated and romanized, and the result is sent back. Nothing is sent until you run a command, and no other note content is read.
• Translation runs on the operator's own hardware, not a third-party AI provider.
• Google Translate fallback asks first. If a translation fails, it can be retried through Google Translate — which means sending that text to Google. By default the plugin asks before doing so, the same as the website, and dismissing the prompt declines. You can set Google Translate fallback to always or never in settings.
• Daily limits apply. Without a key, the allowance is counted against your network address and shared with the website, so one person has one allowance across both. A free account raises it; higher limits again require a paid account.
• Text is processed to produce your result and is not stored for any other purpose. See the privacy policy and terms.

Setup

1. Install and enable the plugin.
2. Select some Chinese text and run Format selection. That is the whole setup.
3. Optional: pick your default target language, romanization, and layout in Settings → Formatted Chinese.
4. Optional: if you hit the daily limit, create a free account at formattedchinese.com, generate an API key, and paste it into the same settings page.

Usage

Open the command palette and run:

Defaults come from settings, so day to day it's select, run, done.

Install

Search Formatted Chinese in Obsidian under Settings → Community plugins → Browse, or open the directory listing.

For a pre-release build, use BRAT pointed at formattedchinese/formatted-chinese-obsidian, or copy main.js and manifest.json from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/formatted-chinese/.

Building from source

npm install
npm run build

Support

Bugs and feature requests: open an issue. If you find the tool useful, you can support the server costs on Ko-fi.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.