I have a relatively large file I need to convert from Pinyin to Chinese characters. Is there any way of doing this without having to type it all in character by character?
I doubt it, but for anyone interested, I have a program that does the exact opposite - it can take a file of Chinese characters and convert into Hanyu Pinyin (Wade-Giles and Yale are also options). It preserves the original characters, so that you see the Pinyin under the characters. It’s actually quite useful if you get Chinese email and you can’t read all the characters.
The downside is that it’s a DOS program. You don’t have to run DOS - you can run it in a Windows DOS-window. In Linux, you could probably use it by setting up the DOS emulator, Dosemu.
The program is called Bamboo Helper. I happen to know the author, Carlos McEvilly, an American who lived in Taiwan for a few years. I’ve asked him if he could make a program that would convert Pinyin to Chinese characters, and he said he’d like to but it would be very difficult because there are so many sound-alike characters. It would require some sort of artificial intelligence - that is, the program would have to recognize the context as well as the sounds. Going from characters to Pinyin is much easier, since it’s basically a search-and-replace operation.
I’ve asked Carlos if he could make a Linux version, and he said he could, but has been too busy with other pursuits.
If you want Bamboo Helper, let me know - it’s freeware. If there’s enough demand, I can put it up on my web site so you can download it. Carlos used to have it on his site, but his site is no longer maintained - I think it’s just a matter of losing interest, not that he doesn’t want people to have it.
best regards,
Robert
Hi Robert,
I am very interested in snagging a copy of Bamboo Helper. Indeed I did a quick search online and couldn’t find a download site for it.
EDIT: After seeing how easy it was to install dosemu, now I’m REALLY sure I want this program.
EDIT2: There is a download site. It is: http://www.bookcase.com/library/software/msdos.education.language.html
[quote=“hoedad”]Hi Robert,
I am very interested in snagging a copy of Bamboo Helper. Indeed I did a quick search online and couldn’t find a download site for it.
EDIT: After seeing how easy it was to install dosemu, now I’m REALLY sure I want this program.
EDIT2: There is a download site. It is: http://www.bookcase.com/library/software/msdos.education.language.html[/quote]
Hi Hoedad,
You didn’t give me your email address, but that’s OK, I went ahead and uploaded a copy of Bamboo Helper to my web site. It’s a later version than the one you found at Bookcase.com. Actually, I don’t think there’s a big difference between the versions, just a few bug fixes. Anyway, you can download it from this url:
best regards,
Robert
P.S. My web site is under construction, so nothing there except some files I put up for public download. I’ll be adding more in the future.
P.S.S. I’ve been in touch with Carlos recently, and have been urging him to make a Linux version. He’s considering it, but will probably write it in Perl, which would make it cross-platform. The fact that I’ve had three people ask me for Bamboo Helper since I made the original post should encourage him.
Thanks Robert-
for the file. I, like so many others, have been moving into Linux with small steps at first, then by leaps and bounds. These cool little tools that make the transition easier are much appreciated.
NJStar does a great job at creating pinyin versions of Chinese files, but of course it doesn’t run on Linux. Just today, in fact, I tried using Crossover, which allows one to run windows programs on Linux, supposedly, but found it very unsatisfactory. The dosemu program, on the other hand, works like a dream, and as you pointed out allows one to run Bamboo Helper on Linux. This is a good and more stable alternative to trying to run NJStar under Crossover.
Thanks again.
Actually, I suspect that pinyin to character conversion would be easier – at least as long as the pinyin were written properly (word separations indicated, etc.). On the other hand, converting characters to pinyin isn’t such an easy thing to do properly because no word separation is indicated and about 20 percent of characters have more than one pronunciation. (The figure is even higher for the most frequently used characters!)