translating Chinese to English

[Robert Citek]

How does one translate Chinese into English?

I've used Google Translate to translate simple words and phrases from
English to Spanish, German, or French and back. I've even used it to
translate English into Chinese. But how to I translate Chinese into
English? That is, how do I enter the Chinese characters?

For example, I have a Chinese character that kind of looks like two
W's, one on top of the other. How do I enter that in to the text box?

Regards,
- Robert

[Nathan Nutter]

SCIM (Smart Common Input Method)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyfRnJ9PRw (watch past the "intro")

[Craig Tatham]

If you have those characters on a webpage, then you can copy and paste the characters into Google Translate and it will convert from Chinese to English. Trick is knowing if it is simplified or traditional ... typically if its a very complex character it is traditional, simpler ones are simplified.

Craig

[Robert Citek]

Perhaps an example might help. Here's an image of some Chinese characters:

http://www.chinesecomputing.com/images/background2.gif

This appears to be an array of characters of 6 columns wide and 10
rows deep. Counting from the upper left corner and starting with 1,
the character in column 1, row 1 looks like a rectangle with a
vertical line bisecting it. While the character in column 4, row 9
looks like a dash or horizontal line. And the character in column 6,
row 8 looks like a cup of tea on top of a dresser.

Some questions:

1) How can I find out what those characters means?
2) How can I use Google translate to find out what those characters mean?
3) Are there on-line dictionaries which I can browse to find the
character I'm looking for?

My interest is not so much in knowing what those particular characters
mean. Rather I'm interested in knowing the process by which I can
discover what those characters mean.

Regards,
- Robert

[Mike Bigalke]

The best process is to take the writing that you have and take it your local Chinese restaurant and find someone who reads both Chinese and English.  That is what I have done in the past.

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Robert Citek <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

Perhaps an example might help.  Here's an image of some Chinese characters:

http://www.chinesecomputing.com/images/background2.gif

This appears to be an array of characters of 6 columns wide and 10
rows deep.  Counting from the upper left corner and starting with 1,
the character in column 1, row 1 looks like a rectangle with a
vertical line bisecting it.  While the character in column 4, row 9
looks like a dash or horizontal line.  And the character in column 6,
row 8 looks like a cup of tea on top of a dresser.

ou

[Mike Bigalke]

errr...

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Mike Bigalke <mikeb...@gmail.com> wrote:

The best process is to take the writing that you have and take it  to your local Chinese restaurant and find someone who reads both Chinese and English.  That is what I have done in the past.

[Craig Tatham]

Ah, I see your issue. If you can get the images in text format then you can use Google Translate just like any other language. For example:

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/index_ch.php

綠營邀達賴來台 台灣罵的比中國還大聲  =

"Pan-green camp to invite the Dalai Lama to Taiwan and Taiwan than China has loudly criticized "

If you just have an image then that is the same as trying to pulling out english characters from an image. You are going to either have to find something that will do OCR on the image or YOU will have to do OCR on it. You might be able to find a Chinese to English dictionary to help you find the images. I will ask Lia tonight if there is any easier way but she doesn't know Chinese that well either. Another option is to join a service like Livemocha which can match you up with someone who knows Chinese who could help and also explain the word/words you are looking for.

 

From my little understanding of Chinese, each image has some meaning and many "words" are combinations of various images.

[Scott Granneman]

our intern chi - who's on this list - can do it for you, for very cheap.

scott
--
R. Scott Granneman
sc...@granneman.com ~ www.granneman.com
Full list of publications @ http://www.granneman.com/publications
My new book: Google Apps Deciphered @ http://www.granneman.com/books

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself."
---Mark Twain

[Robert Citek]

OK. How do I type the characters into an e-mail? Or where can I find
a character table (like ASCII) so that I can say "it's characters 234,
532, 21, 143 ..."? How is that character table organized (sorted) so
that I can search it?

Regards,
- Robert

[Craig Tatham]

You have to have the character set loaded into your OS. Probably what Nathan mentioned earlier. Typing the language involves using various combinations of characters that each letter represents. For example, here is a Chinese keyboard.

http://www.datacal.com/s_images/chinese-keyboard-black-usb_l.jpg

 

I normally cheat though and type what I want into Google Translate and copy/paste the associated characters into a Rich Text capable email. You can also sometimes type in pinyin which is a written expression of the sounds the Chinese words make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

[Scott Granneman]

Email Chi @ c...@chizeng.com & ask him.

or maybe he'll see this & reply.

scott
--
R. Scott Granneman
sc...@granneman.com ~ www.granneman.com
Full list of publications @ http://www.granneman.com/publications
My new book: Google Apps Deciphered @ http://www.granneman.com/books

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few
of us left."
---Oscar Levant

[Edward Blumenthal]

I don't speak Chinese, but for French, Spanish and Hebrew I installed
the appropriate software keyboard which allows me to switch keyboards
with a shortcut. I think I mentioned this in a previous conversation
about using accents with deadkeys.

Spanish: mañana, qué pasa
Hebrew: מה קורה

Of course it helps to speak the language.

ned

Edward Blumenthal
edo...@gmail.com



2009/9/2 Craig Tatham <cta...@gmail.com>: