Category Archives: software

China moves against bloggers

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From an AP story by Elaine Kurtenbach: “China Orders All Web Sites to Register“:

Authorities have ordered all China-based Web sites and blogs to register or be closed down, in the latest effort by the communist government to police the world of cyberspace.

Commercial publishers and advertisers can face fines of up to 1 million yuan ($120,000) for failing to register, according to documents posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Information Industry.

Private, noncommercial bloggers or Web sites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, it said. The ministry, which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance, said 74 percent of all sites had already registered….

The government has long required all major commercial Web sites to register and take responsibility for Internet content — at least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed subversive online.

But blogs, online diaries, muckraking Web sites and dissident publishing have been harder to police. According to cnblog.org, a Chinese Web log host company, the country has about 700,000 such sites….

The latest restrictions follow many others. Authorities have closed down thousands of Internet cafes — the main entry to the Web for many Chinese unable to afford a computer or Internet access.

They’ve also installed surveillance cameras and begun requiring visitors to Shanghai Internet cafes to register using their official identity cards — all in an effort to keep tabs on who’s seeing and saying what online.

Google, China, and censorship

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Although I strongly support the adoption of Hanyu Pinyin in Taiwan, many of the other outlooks of this Web site on language, Chinese characters, and romanization are unlikely to fit well with the official line in China. Will this site end up blocked by the Great Firewall? I doubt it. But I think censorship concerns everyone, so I’m adding this here:

Following Google’s announcement that it is to open an office in China, Reporters Without Borders has written to the company’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them for a clear response to the following question : “Will you agree to censor your search engine if asked to by Beijing ?”

rest of the article

another official look at kanji in Japan

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TOKYO — Education minister Nariaki Nakayama on Wednesday asked a government panel on the Japanese language to come up with guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech, known as “keigo” in Japanese, to counter its widespread misuse, ministry official said.

“Although many people feel the need to use ‘keigo,’ it can hardly be said that they are using it properly,” Toshio Kojima, senior vice education minister, said in explaining the reason for making the request on Nakayama’s behalf.

The minister also asked the Council for Cultural Affairs — an advisory body to the government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs — to review the most commonly used Chinese characters in Japanese to reflect their current usage on computers.

The council’s subcommittee on the Japanese language is expected to discuss the issues and come up with a final report within two years for “keigo” and four to five years for the Chinese characters, known as the “joyo kanji.”…

A 2003 survey on the Japanese language by the agency found that 96% of Japanese believe “keigo” will remain a necessary part of speech in the future, while 60% said they do not mind using extremely polite phrases even though they may be considered grammatically incorrect by purists.

The subcommittee will check on the use of honorifics and polite phrases deemed to deviate from perceived standard usage, including phrases commonly used by sales clerks.

The guidelines will study the three conventional “keigo” categories — honorific, self-effacing and polite — to improve understanding of proper usage and indicate specific situations when each level of speech should be used as well as examples of improper usage.

As for the “joyo kanji,” Kojima said the current “joyo kanji” table should be reviewed in line with the widespread use of computers.

The current table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981.

The subcommittee will conduct research in the next two years on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places, as well as on some characters that are often used on computers but not included in the table.

source

fonts and sinograph limitations

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A reminder that right now there are many thousands of Chinese characters that are not included in font sets and that fonts with Chinese characters will always have to play catch-up:

政协委员：电脑字库该强制更新
http://www.sina.com.cn 2005年03月14日18:17 金羊网-羊城晚报

　　本报北京专电　特派记者周敏、蒋铮、余颖、张演钦、李宜航报道：常会出现电脑“不识字”(打不出来)的状况，不是“脑子笨”，而是字库旧。全国政协委员李德毅建议坚决强制更新使用新型汉字字库标准，令6000万中国人不再遭遇无名尴尬。

　　李德毅讲了个故事：学生杜餻在银行的存款到期了。银行遗憾地通知他，无法再为他办理续存业务，因为电脑里打不出“餻”。以前这个字用同音字“义”代替，实行实名制 后行不通了。由于姓名用字比较生僻，杜餻们的姓名被使用时，要么被“杜益鸟”之类代替，要么用同音字或者拼音代替，要么干脆用三角或者星号代替。在一些地方，遇到电脑打不出的生僻字，户籍管理部门甚至会要求改名后再上户口。在换发二代身份证的过程中，就经常出现人名中的生僻字无法输入的问题。

　　出现这种情况，是电脑中安装和执行的字库标准仍然是国家标准总局1981年5月颁布的GB2312-1998《信息交换用汉字编码字符集———基本集》，该标准仅收录了6763个汉字。为了解决汉字字库编码陈旧，不适合信息技术发展和社会需求的问题，国家标准总局2000年推出了GB18030-2000新标准，含2.7万多个汉字，强制执行，过渡期到2001年8月1日为止。但实际中，还有不少系统在使用旧字库，没有更新。

　　据不完全统计，中国人姓名中使用GB2312规定的6763汉字之外的字，大约占4.5%；使用GB18030-2000新标准的2.7万个汉字之外的字，大约占0.5%。(本报北京专电)

new Taiwanese dictionary

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Actually, it’s a little hard to figure out exactly what this article is saying, other than that there is soon going to be a new dictionary of Taiwanese done in Tongyong Pinyin. It seems to have been made not by a scholar but by a retired businessman, who spent five years working on it. But then the article starts talking about software and Microsoft Word. Does anyone have any more information?

咱台語尚美！ 苦心完成新字典
民視 2005-01-15 16:14

一套目前台灣最有系統整理的通用台語字典,已經編纂完成,即將在春節過後正式出版,這是吳崑松老先生在退休之後, 投入五年心血,所完成的鉅著,他期望新一代在學台語的時候,不僅能和國際接軌,也能更輕鬆.現有台灣通用台語字典小小一本,連通用客語字典都比它厚得多, 不過吳崑松老先生所完成卻是更厚的上下兩冊九千字的通用台語字典,即將在春節過後正式出版,還獲得李前總統與陳水扁總統的簽名留念.以通用拼音來學台語, 將傳統台語八調簡化成六調.號稱百分之九十五的發音和英文相容不須要另加套裝軟體,直接就可以在電腦Word上面作業.這是吳崑松在從事國際貿易退休後, 全力投 注五年時間所完成的作品,只希望能完成一個心願,讓有更多的新一代,體會到台語之美.(民視新聞陳淑貞,陳君宜台北報導)

keigo

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Panel proposes guidelines to halt misuse of honorific Japanese

Thursday, February 3, 2005 at 08:07 JST
TOKYO — A government panel on the Japanese language proposed Wednesday setting up the nation’s first guidelines on the use of the honorific and polite form of speech [“keigo“] to counter its widespread misuse….

The panel also calls for revaluating Chinese characters designated for common use, known as “joyo kanji,” to reflect current use of Chinese characters on computers.

The current joyo kanji table, which specifies 1,945 common Chinese characters, has not been updated since 1981. The panel notes that the table did not foresee the widespread use of computers.

The panel also suggested the need for conducting research on the public’s ability to write and read Chinese characters, and how frequently certain ones are used for the names of people and places.

An Agency for Cultural Affairs official said it is necessary to study some characters that are often used but not included in the table. (Kyodo News)

And their point is…? With computers, people are increasingly unable to write characters by hand.

‘Net influences writing in Chinese

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Related sorts of Internet-influenced mixed scripts, abbreviations, and loan words are also popular in Taiwan and China among the young.

“よøぎㅎビλĦㅎコ_¤ 읍ㅎF_しち흐ロっㅉヴ”_≥∇≤☆”

This is one of the commonly used words of teenagers on the Internet. It means: “Hello. You are so cool.”

The language used on the Internet is passing over the danger level for breaking down Hangeul, the Korean alphabet.

Up until recently, it was just writing down the words as they were heard or shortening words, like “ban-ga-wo” (meaning ‘glad to see you’ in Korean) to “bang-ga” or “yeo-ja-chin-gu” (meaning “girlfriend” in Korean) to “yeo-chin.” However, lately, it has gotten to the point where words that the general public cannot understand at all are being used.

The language for these words used by some netizens for communication, mixing special characters, Japanese, Chinese characters and Korean, are called “alien words.”

The meaning of alien words such as “㉯㉯납별뉨ⓔ는ⓔ렇퀘글쓰능高☆로㉯뽀게생각안훼 (I, Byeol-nim, do not think using words this way is that bad)”, can be guessed when looking closely, but some seem like codes, such as “읍ㅎ℉를_ㅁ|てつ효_∩∇∩★ (I believe in you)”.

These alien words are becoming popular among some teenage netizens who want to share secrets of their own. They even make community clubs on the Internet and talk with each other in alien words.

However, these alien words are not in the Korean spelling system, and so netizens using this language sometimes misunderstand each other. Accordingly, a translation program for alien words has appeared. It translates Korean words into alien words.

The problem here is that this language used by teenagers on the Internet is continuing into use in everyday life, becoming a serious threat to breaking down the Korean language.

In fact, teachers are pointing out that many students are writing “추카” instead of “축하” and “겜” instead of “게임” during writing classes. (Words are written by the way they sound or by shortening the original word.)

Accordingly, the Education and Human Resources Development Ministry (MOE) has published a teachers’ guide to refine the Korean language and effectively teach students the manners in language for everyday life to be distributed throughout schools on Monday, January 10.

This teachers guide, titled: “Refining Internet Language, Manners for Language in Everyday Life,” was written by the MOE, the National Academy of the Korean Language, the Information Communication Ethics Committee, the Korean Education and Research Information Service and the Teachers’ Clean Media Movement, and will be used during classes starting this semester.

super software?

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I keep seeing vague references to “ICT” software, whose boosters like to make claims such as the following: “Usually students take six years to master 2,500 characters. With ICT they can learn 2,000 characters in a year. With this they can spend less time learning Chinese and more time on other subjects like English, Music and Science. With ICT, six-year-olds can write essays within a month!”

While I believe computers can help people learn Chinese characters, that’s roughly 10 characters every school day. I just don’t believe that all of those would be learned and fully retained. Where are the scientific studies? Does anyone know anything more about this?

On the other hand, Hanyu Pinyin can most definitely be learned within a month. Once that is done, people, including six-year-olds, are limited in what they can write only by the extent of their vocabulary.