Learn Chinese NewsFrequently Asked Questions
What is Learn Chinese News?
An iPhone app for studying Mandarin Chinese with real news. You pick a topic and source, open an article, and read it with Chinese and English shown side by side, sentence-aligned — with pinyin, read-aloud, and vocabulary study built in.
What level of Chinese do I need?
The app is most useful from upper-beginner onward. Pinyin annotations, sentence-by-sentence English, and read-aloud make real articles approachable earlier than you might expect, and you can lean on those aids less as you improve.
Does it support Traditional Chinese?
Yes. You can switch the whole app between Simplified and Traditional Chinese at any time, including article text, vocabulary, and the read-aloud voice. Traditional conversion follows the Taiwan standard.
Where do the articles come from?
Headlines come from the public RSS feeds of real news outlets in mainland China and Taiwan (for example 人民网, 中央社, and 自由時報). Articles are fetched on demand when you open them — the app is a learning tool, not a news publisher, and it never stores or republishes articles. You can also paste any article URL of your own.
How are the translations made?
Translations and vocabulary lists are generated by an AI model when you open an article. They're good study aids, but machine translation can make mistakes — treat the English as a guide, not a definitive rendering.
Does the app need an internet connection?
Yes, to fetch headlines and process articles. The read-aloud voice, pinyin annotation, and Simplified/Traditional conversion all run on your device, and your saved vocabulary is stored locally.
Do I need an account?
No. There are no accounts, no sign-in, and no personal profile. Your preferences and saved vocabulary live only on your device.
Is the read-aloud voice a cloud service?
No — it uses the speech voices built into iOS, so it works without sending any audio or text to a speech service. For the best sound, download an Enhanced Chinese voice in iOS Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.
How much does the app cost?
Pricing will be announced when the app launches on the App Store. To keep the service sustainable, article processing has fair-use rate limits.
How do I report a bug or suggest a feature?
Use the form on the Support page — messages go straight to the developer. For bugs, please include your device model, iOS version, and what you were doing when the problem happened.