fanyi.el

fanyi.el is a simple yet powerful multi-dictionaries interface for Emacs, currently it includes:

海词
有道翻译, Unofficial ~~outdated~~ API
有道同义词, Unofficial API
etymonline
Longman
LibreTranslate, Free and Open Source Machine Translation API.
American Heritage dictionary, unusable in China due to high latency. Not fully implemented

fanyi.el has integrations with:

imenu, M-x imenu to jump to dictionary section directly.
bookmark, C-x r m to make a bookmark for current query word which turns bookmark into a vocabulary notebook.
outline-mode, TAB to collapse on section.
ol (org-link), org-store-link on a fanyi buffer, the link can be inserted later via org-insert-link. It's accomplished by introducing a fanyi link type. e.g., C-c C-o on [[fanyi:happy][description of happy]] will invoke a fanyi search. Since ol depends on org package, this integration needs an explicit (require 'ol-fanyi).

Installation

Install fanyi.el from MELPA with:

M-x package-install RET fanyi RET

If you're an American Heritage Dictionary user, make sure Minion New font is installed. Otherwise the pronunciation may be displayed in tofu, or an all-the-icons icon if you have all-the-icons installed.

# family: Minion New Bold
# https://ahdictionary.com/application/resources/fonts/MinionNew-Bold.ttf
#
# family: Minion New Italic
# https://ahdictionary.com/application/resources/fonts/MinionNew-Italic.ttf
curl https://ahdictionary.com/application/resources/fonts/MININ___.TTF -o Minion.ttf

# linux
mv Minion.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/

# macOS
mv Minion.ttf ~/Library/Fonts/

Usage

Call fanyi-dwim, or fanyi-dwim2 if you can confirm the word at point is wanted. A new command fanyi-from-history is introduced to browse the search history.

If you want M-x fanyi to list only fanyi-dwim, fanyi-dwim2 and fanyi-from-history, try

;; Emacs 28 only
(setq read-extended-command-predicate #'command-completion-default-include-p)

Don't customize fanyi-providers via setq, use the custom system instead.

;; If you want English-English dictionary only.
(use-package fanyi
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (fanyi-providers '(fanyi-etymon-provider
                     fanyi-longman-provider)))

;; Default, comment out the providers you don't need.
(use-package fanyi
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (fanyi-providers '(;; 海词
                     fanyi-haici-provider
                     ;; 有道同义词词典
                     fanyi-youdao-thesaurus-provider
                     ;; Etymonline
                     fanyi-etymon-provider
                     ;; Longman
                     fanyi-longman-provider
                     ;; LibreTranslate
                     fanyi-libre-provider)))

;; For non-`use-package' users
(custom-set-variables
 '(fanyi-providers '(fanyi-haici-provider
                     fanyi-youdao-thesaurus-provider
                     fanyi-etymon-provider
                     fanyi-longman-provider
                     fanyi-libre-provider)))

If you're a Windows user,

(setq fanyi-sound-player-support-https t)

may be helpful since - is interpreted as stdin is an UNIX convention. If fanyi-sound-player-support-https is non-nil, the url will be passed to fanyi-sound-player directly.

FAQ

Audio button icon displayed in tofu. The icon is emoji, install the proper font to display it. If you use archlinux, yay -S ttf-symbola without additional settings. For MacOS users, add the following elisp to your Emacs config.

;; "Apple Color Emoji" is bundled with MacOS.
;;
;; Emacs 29, 28
(set-fontset-font t 'emoji (font-spec :family "Apple Color Emoji") nil 'prepend)

;; Emacs 27
(set-fontset-font t 'symbol (font-spec :family "Apple Color Emoji") nil 'prepend)