Technology certainly helps for Japanese.. when I hear a word I don't understand (e.g. from my wife), I enter it as it sounds and the dictionary gives me a nice (often short) list of translations, with hiragana, katakana, and kanji. And, due to my RtK studies (see earlier posts) I often get an 'aha' moment when I see the kanji. If what you described works similarly for Chinese then yes, it's a real game changer.