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I learned Chinese when I was stationed ten years ago in Taipei,
working as software technology adviser to IBM's joint venture with III
(Institute for Information Industry), a government agency. At that time, I
used taxi a lot. The Japanese would normally write Chinese characters on
paper to communicate with the taxi driver there, but I quickly learned how
to say "You-tsuan" (turn right), "Tsuo-tsuan" (turn left), "Yi-chi-tsuo"
(go up straight), "Kuo-ma-lu, ting cha!" (cross the road and stop the
car!), etc. Taxi Chinese, thus, is the basis of my Chinese. After this
experience in Taiwan, I took advanced Chinese at the Department of
Literature, Shanghai University, for four weeks during the sabbatical that
was allowed for IBM's long-term senior employees.
China and Taiwan are a multi-race, multilingual society. The Chinese
majority speak different dialects, but the written Chinese language is one
based on the Beijing dialect. This written language, however, comes in two
flavors: Simplified Chinese used in mainland China and Traditional Chinese
used in Taiwan and Hongkong. The most common encodings used are GB-2312
(GB being short for Guojia Biaozhun, i.e., National Standard) for
Simplified Chinese and Big5 (five major applications having been planned
by Taipei Computer Association at one time) for Traditional Chinese.
For your Windows-based computer, you can download the Simplified and
Traditional Chinese input methods, as Global IME 5.01 for Simplified
Chinese and the Language Pack, and Global IME 5.01 for Traditional Chinese
and the Language Pack, respectively, from Microsoft's Japanese page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie_intl/ja/ime.htm
or English page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/features/ime.asp
The file names are scmono.exe (4.1MB) and tcmondo.exe
(3.8MB), respectively. (Likewise, Global IME 5.01 for Korean can be
downloaded and installed, but Global IME 5.01 for Japanese should never be
installed on your computer with Windows 95/98 Japanese version because a
disaster awaits you...)
Global IMEs can be used to input Chinese characters on Microsoft Input
Method Manager-compliant application software, such as Outlook 98, Outlook
Express 4.0, Word 2000, etc. The Simplified Chinese characters can be
created by first depressing Alt-Shift keys to display the floating task
bar, showing Zhong (middle) on the left, Pin (common) on the right, and
the moon and period marks in the middle; and then using the romanized
Chinese characters. This method is called the Pin-yin input method, and
this romanized Chinese characters are the ones that the beginning Chinese
students in Japan and elsewhere are very much familiar with.
The Traditional Chinese characters can be processed in one of two
methods: Zhu-yin and Cang-jie. Depressing Alt-Shift keys further will show
a floating task bar with Ban (half) or Zhuan (whole) on the left and the
Bo phonetic character or "A" on the right, which is for the phonetic input
method called "Zhu-yin" or "Bo-Po-Mo-Fo" from the first four letters of
the phonetic alphabet. The "Bo-Po-Mo-Fo" phonetic alphabet is taught from
the kindergarten and elementary school in Taiwan. On the keyboard, as you
can get the snapshot of the keyboard layout by right-clicking on the
floating task bar, the characters B, P, M and F, are assigned on 1, Q, A
and Z keys, respectively, from the upper left corner to down. These
phonetic characters look to a typical Japanese hard to remember, but they
are used when you go to Taiwan to learn Chinese, and I myself learned them
while my stay in Taiwan.
The other Traditional Chinese input method is for professionals, and
can be activated by depressing Alt-Shift keys still further, until you get
a floating task bar with Ban (half) or Zhuan (whole) on the left and Cang
(warehouse) or "A." On the keyboard, as you can right-click on the
floating task bar and get the snapshot of the keyboard layout, the 26
Chinese characters such as the sun, moon, fire, water, tree, gold, earth,
bamboo, twenty, etc., are assigned to the keytops. Canjie (or Ts'ang-chay,
in the Wade-Giles romanization mainly used in Taiwan) is the name of the
hero in the Chinese legend, who is said to have invented Chinese
characters during the reign of the third emperor, Emperor Yellow, by
observing the birds' footprints.
You can now start Ichitaro Ark, select Chinese/China and
Chinese/Taiwan, and specify MS Hei or MS Song font, for preparation in
Chinese input. Both fonts do not show up beautifully unfortunately, the
former better than the latter, in my judgement. You cannot input Chinese
characters directly in Ichitaro Ark, but can input indirectly in Outlook
Express, for example, by selecting New Mail, choosing Format, Encoding and
Unicode (UTF-8) and keying in Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese in
the e-mail text area, after depressing Alt-Shift keys to get the Chinese
IME. These Chinese characters in Outlook Express can then be cut &
pasted to Ichitaro Ark's multilingual document. This cut and paste process
sometimes does not work properly, especially on some Simplified Chinese
characters, in which case Outlook Express can be changed to GB-2312
encoding, and the Outlook Express message can be saved to a text file,
that can now be imported to Ichitaro Ark.
As you have seen, Ichitaro Ark does not allow direct Chinese character
input from Global IME. In Japan, there are several software packages, such
as Kodensha's Chinese
Writer that allow direct input to a Japanese application program,
which also work fine for Ichitaro Ark, as reported by others. In these
packages, the Pin-yin input method for Traditional Chinese (such an input
method already available in Windows 98 Traditional Chinese version) and
other functions useful for Japanese users are included. In addition, by
the time you see this review, Windows 2000 will have been shipped, which
should provide better multilingual capabilities.
Ichitaro Ark does not handle the right-to-left written languages such
as Arabic and Hebrew, as mentioned in Justsystem's announcement. Asian
languages, such as the Indian languages and Thai, cannot be handled,
either. There are reports that Vietnamese can be processed using VietKey 4.08 that
is linked from Vietnam Net's download page (the document being
defined as an English document), so more adventurous users may want to try
it and other font/input method packages. Plug-ins, such as the ones that
allow display of Chinese and Korean menus are being prepared. So, let's
exchange our experiences in Justsystem's Ark Q&A forum or in the MULCO
mailing list that was mentioned earlier. |
