Asia's Orthographic Dilemma

11. Computing with Chinese Characters

258 11. Computing with Chinese Characters Technology’s cutting edge is two-sided. While enhancing our ability to shape nature, technology also highlights defects in mechanisms whose limitations were not universally recognized. Progress is served in both cases. The present chapter explores the relationship between Chinese characters and computers—the most recent in a millennia-old series of technical innovations for recording language. I begin by examining how well computers have fulfilled their predicted role of eliminating gaps in the ease with which alphabetic and character texts are generated and processed. The practical consequences of a large character set whose units lack a wellmotivated design will be assessed as they apply to computer storage and output, and to various types of character input schemes. The result of this interplay between modern technology and one of history’s oldest forms of writing will startle many. Overview of Chinese Character– Based Computing A few years ago, I was chatting with a younger Vietnamese-American friend who was interested in learning about Chinese writing. I explained the six “types” of Chinese characters, their connections with Chinese syllables and morphemes, the use made of characters by Koreans, Japanese and, historically, by Vietnamese, and how the system developed in these countries . When I finished talking, his first question was not how do the characters affect learning and literacy? or can Chinese and Japanese read each others’ writing? or some other of the usual questions that have preoccupied over-forty students of Chinese characters. He simply wanted to know, “How do you get these things onto a computer?” Indeed, how? Before we get wrapped up in details, let’s stand back and try to get a perspective on how this question has evolved over time. Some twenty-five years ago, when personal computers were first being marketed , many people who used East Asian languages saw computers as the “great equalizer,” which would do for Chinese characters in text processing Computing with Chinese Characters 259 the same thing that photocopiers and facsimile did for characters in text reproduction and transmission. The reason why alphabetic writing was more convenient than character writing, why it could be typed, printed, telegraphed, and telexed more easily, it was argued, had nothing to do with any intrinsic flaws Chinese characters might have and everything to do with the fact that the system was being pressed to conform to existing, alphabet-based technology. What was needed was new technology that took the character system as a given, instead of the other way around. Computers were to be the source of that technology, the invention that would give Chinese characters a new lease on life. How did this prediction pan out? For reasons already apparent plus a few more that will soon become evident, computers are becoming the pro– Chinese character camp’s worst nightmare. One of the problems, endemic to each of the many “catch up” schemes hatched in East Asia, is that the target refuses to stand still. When Chinese character supporters were first proclaiming the potential of computers to erase the gap with alphabetic scripts in text generation and processing, personal computers were not much more than modified typewriters with limited memory capacity that allowed some basic text editing. Today they are extensions of our lives— and, for all intents, our minds. Not only have computers facilitated our relationship with the real and psychological worlds, they have changed the nature of these worlds so that what began as means toward ends are now, for better or for worse, ends in themselves. For hundreds of thousands of people, computers are their entire lives. For many millions more, their development, manufacturing, programming, sale, use, and repair constitute a large and growing chunk of their livelihoods. Life is becoming, in many ways, a function of information processing. Computing speed on personal computers is approaching and may even have exceeded what users can comfortably handle, which is to say, the speed of thought itself. Early PCs took what seemed like an eternity—two or three seconds—to execute basic commands. Current alphabet-based word processing programs running on inexpensive, commercially available hardware carry out most of their functions nearly instantaneously. Delays of the sort that plague character-based programs are unconscionable to someone accustomed to the luxury of alphanumeric word processing. While the difference between waiting a few milliseconds and a few seconds may seem marginal in comparison to the difference in the time it took three decades ago to type a page of alphabetic...