I’ve decided to try and learn (to identify at least) 10 new traditional Chinese characters a day in order to learn most or all of the 3000 essential characters in a year. However, instead of just learning them from #1 to #3000, I decided to learn them as I encounter them. For instance, if I get to a store and see a new character that I need to know, I’ll make a point of learning it.
Another way of doing it is to identify any unknown characters in a passage and study them. To do that, I’ve just bought an English/Chinese book, The Old Man and the Sea.
The problem I’ve encountered is that when you come across an unknown character, how do you identify it. Well, I did a Google search to see if I could find an online copy of the book in Chinese with the phrase “他一個老人” and found one. The reason for that was that I could use Chinese Perakun to read each character or set of characters. Unfortunately it is in simplified script.
I have NJ Star, but don’t know how to convert Simplified script into traditional script.
If someone could please give me some advice on how to convert it, I’d would appreciate it very much.
I use this sometimes to translate entire articles into pinyin so I can read them. In any case it works well.
If you are travelling around consider a pda with the oxford chinese-english dictionary on it. Suhc a devise will have character recognition (simplified and trad) so if you see something on the street just whip out the pda, write the character out on the screen with the stylus and then choose the match. Definitions in English and Chinese come up, and these include pinyin for the character. It’s the ultimate street fighting character tool.
A the moment I use the second best street fighting tool, my cell. All I do is take a picture and send it to someone who can read Chinese. Haha. I’ll have a look at that website. Thanks.
Converting from simplified to traditional isn’t as straightforward as many people think. Programs like NJ Star and such work OK but will still have many errors in its conversions. It may lead to some confusion if you’re learning based on the converted output.
For converting texts in Chinese characters to texts in Pinyin, the best programs are Wenlin and Key – both of which are terrific but cost about US$200.
The best Web site I know of for this is Adsotrans. It’s not as good as Wenlin or Key, but it’s free.
There are other sites that convert Hanzi to Pinyin (sort of, kind of). But I generally prefer Adso to them.
