I use http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php You can just paste a whole text into it, and it will give you the pinyin of each character, and from there you can see the radicals, learn how to write - all sorts of things. It's simpler than nciku and much faster.

Best Way to check Chinese translation and pinyin,(especially long sentence)is using google translation. If you want to know the pinyin of character that you recognize, just check in www.nciku.com, in which website have so many useful tools for learning Chinese. hope you find it useful.

try http://dict.youdao.com

use a dictionary if you know how to look up words with their radicals