Nice one Cranky, it works a treat. 
I just typed a lengthy response to the OP’s query explaining how you can use pinyin to input traditional characters using English Windows OS, but realised that Pinyin Zhou did a much better job! 
Scroll down a little until you see the heading “To Install Hanyu Pinyin for Traditional Chinese”.
I had some trouble getting this to work at first, but ended up figuring it out without the link. :s
Edit: Sorry, I missed cranky laowai’s second post giving the more precise link.
Double edit: Does anyone else use the IME pad under the ‘Tools’ menu on the Language bar? It doubles as a useful little dictionary, even if I have to trace the character I don’t know using the mouse, which can be tough. But still beats trying to guess the radical!
Is that the handwriting input thingy, TS?
Another question: if you need both HYPY for yourself and bpmf for your wife (stereotyping I know but what the hell), is it possible to set things up so that HYPY launches by default, and you toggle to get the bpmf input, rather than the other way round? I’m not being mean: I use it for work, she doesn’t!
Well, that’s what they call it, so I assume so. The dialog box is called “IME Pad - Hand Writing”.
I know you can use Left Alt+Shift to toggle between languages, say Chinese (PRC) - Simplified and Chinese (Taiwan) - Traditional.
The only way I know how to change input methods though is through the language bar.
Does anyone know of a program that will turn pinyin into characters. Basically I want to be able to type in pinyin and output the real deal.
Thanks…
Yes. Not really a separate software program, more just tweaks you do to your existing OS.
pinyin.info/news/2006/setting-up … yin-input/
pinyinjoe.com/
Do you mean a pinyin input system? If so, read this thread. If you’re talking about a program that will convert a page of pinyin into characters, I very much doubt that such a thing exists or is even possible (but I’m willing to be proven wrong on that 
).
There’s no reason someone couldn’t make one. (I doubt, however, that anyone has bothered to do so because there are very few texts written in Pinyin that aren’t also written in Chinese characters – at least for now 
.) After all, Pinyin input for Chinese characters on a computer is exactly the same thing, just with the Pinyin to be converted being given in smaller units than the page – in most cases the word or phrase. And even on such a small scale that works quite well.
While it is sometimes necessary for people to tell the computer which character to pick, keep in mind that the reverse is also true: In character-to-Pinyin conversions it is often necessary to tell the computer which pronunciation to use. For that matter, in character-to-Pinyin conversions it is often necessary for people to tell the computer where the semantic boundaries are. (Spaces between words are a good thing!) Many people, however, might not be as aware of this as they should be because most Hanzi-to-Pinyin programs fail to indicate for their users such problematic readings but simply spit something out that might very well be wrong.
For related information, see Pinyin-to-Chinese Character Computer Conversion Systems and the Realization of Digraphia in China, by Yin Binyong. Although this was written in 1991, the principles remain the same. And consider how much more accurate such conversions must have become in the interim.
Hi guys
Please excuse my ignorance about this topic but I am a beginner level Chinese learner (just finished 3-mth course at local Uni in JongLi) and have decided that using characters in email/msn to my Chinese friends/language exchange partners would be a great way to keep up my character skills.
Last night, my friend downloaded software that converts pinyin into traditional characters. It’s a Microsoft product because she got it from this site but I can’t confirm which one because we both lack the language skils to discuss this. microsoft.com/taiwan/windows … dowsxp.htm
I figure you guys know what I am talking about, but if not - I can question her again.
I was hooked immediately and up half the night living my dream of communicating ONLINE in Chinese. however, only half of my sentences appear with the character I require (it often shows wrong character or none at all - see example below). Do you understand this problem? NO doubt, many of you have experienced it before.
Here is a result of the pinyin I input as: Wo xiang yao qu zhong quo. I am thinking of going to China
我昂 (I input ‘xiang’) 要 qu (wont’ recognise ‘qu’ so I must revert to pinyin) 資宏國 (I typed ‘Zhong guo’)
Can anyone help with this. I was busting with excitement when I first used it but now I am almost ripping my hair out.
Thanks guys… hope to hear soon.
I use njstar (njstar.com/) to write Chinese and then copy and paste the characters whereever I need them…
I think miss chief is just having trouble with the IME input method for Windows.
When you type your pinyin, be sure to add the numeral (1-5) for 1st thru 4th tone, and 5 for neutral. For example, when you type qu, it sits there waiting for a tone, and doesn’t display a character. Adding 1, i.e, qu1, prompts it to show a character of its own choosing, such as 屈. You have to hit the down arrow if that’s not the graph you want, to display a short list of other characters. Arrow down to the one you want and hit enter. If you don’t see the one you want, keep going down past the bottom one and it will scroll through one or more additional pages of options.
Then again, I might not have understood the nature of your problem. IME (at least the version I have) will often pick the right graphs based on context even if you fail to type the tones. Here’s what I got when I forgot to add the tone numerals as I typed: 我想要去中國
I use NJStar also. It rocks. Also, if you are not sure about the character you need, hover the mouse over the options of words at the bottom and it will give you the definitions. If you type in two words at the same time that usually go together, it will have both characters for you (i.e. type in “bendan” and it will show up as: 
).
I think it’s free shrug… or at least it was when they told me to download it for school.
Are you sure you have Hanyu Pinyin as the input method? I have a suspicion that it may be Tongyong Pinyin instead, which is a Taiwan developed romanization method. And even then, it’s not used all that consistently in Taiwan.
Why does the second character come up as 昂? Because “x” is not a valid letter in Tongyong, so it is ignored. You also cannot start with an “i”, so that’s ignored. Then you end up with “ang”, which is the pronounciation for 昂. The letter “q” is not valid in Tongyong so that’s ignored. As well, one cannot start off with “u” in Tongyong, so that’s ignored. Thus, the entire “qu” combination was thrown away. Lastly, “zh” is not a valid combination in Tongyong, but one is allowed to start off with a “z”. So typing “z” is OK. But once you typed “h”, the input method effectively says this:
- “zh” is not valid, so I’m going to assume you’ve truncated a character that starts with “z” and started another character that starts with “h”. I’ll now try and give you my best guess on a character that starts with “z”.
- “z” can be “zih”, “zong”, “zen”, “zuan”, etc. All of these, in Zhuyin (注音) starts off with the phonetic element “ㄗ” (I’m not sure if you know Zhuyin or not, but this is a widely used Chinese style phonetic system). So since you’ve only given me a single “z”, I’m going to assume the sound is the same as the Zhuyin ㄗ (which is “zih” in Tongyong and “zi” in Hanyu Pinyin)
- My first guess for “ㄗ/zih/zi” is this character: 資
Since “z” is now resolved, you’re left with “hong” which then becomes 宏. “Guo” is the same in Tongyong as in Hanyu Pinyin, so you did not encounter any problems. So that’s it. By assuming you’re using Tongyong and working through with what you’ve typed logically, this seems to make sense.
Of course, not sitting in front of your computer, all this is just a guess on my part. To see if you’re really using Tongyong, try typing the following and see if you get what you want:
wo siang yao cyu jhong guo.
If it comes up as 我想要去中國 or variants that sound the same, then I’d say you’re using Tongyong Pinyin.
EDIT: miss_chief, please let us know if you get this figured out and if so, what you did to resolve the problem
go to www.joepinyin.com
Joepinyin sorts out an easier way to understand how Bill Gates crew expects you to set up the computer for Chinese.
What I like about NJStar is that you don’t have to know the tones. It’s like heaven! Just type in the correct spelling and you can choose from the options shown regardless of the tones. Also, you can type the first letters of several characters to get options for combinations, like: “k x t” for “kou xiang tang” (口香糖)
I downloaded this. It is very good.
I’d like to be able to type in hao3 and come up with the correct character and the English.
Microsoft does not seem to be offering the option of typing character and number. Just character and search. This is not helping my tones at all.
The njstar program does not seem to offer this either.
What am I missing. Is there a program that will help or does Microsoft or the njstar program do this and I can’t find the correct functions yet.
The standard Microsoft pinyin IME is actually pretty good, I think. Ironman - you can use it to type the tone if you want to - type hao3 and it’ll show you 好, then if you press the “down arrow” key to show alternatives it’ll only show the other characters with the pronunciation “hao3”: 郝 and 恏. Or you can type in “hao” and then hit the space bar (no tone selected). This will let you select from a list of all characters with the pronunciation “hao”, regardless of the tone. So 號 (hao4), 蒿 (hao1) and 豪 (hao2) are also available from the drop-down menu. I find this invaluable when I’ve forgotten the tone of a character, and in fact the clever little machine usually works out what I want to say without having to select any tones at all. But in terms of what you require from it, you can input tones and it will help you get it right. I’m generally not impressed with Microsoft’s product, but I think their IME does everything I need it to do very efficiently. I’ve never tried NJStar simply because I’ve never felt the need.
As for coming up with the English alongside your character, I can’t help you there. I always use a separate program for translation, like Wenlin.
Thanks Taffy. I finally solved it by deciding to try the numbers above the keyboard. That works. I never normally use numbers above the letters because I have to look down. I can touch type the numbers from the number keypad so it didn’t dawn on me to do something so simple as to use the look and peck numbers. Although, I guess these become touch type if you are hitting them for long enough.
Okay, I was just looking for it all in one. I payed for Pleco yesterday and put it on the PDA phone. Excellent.
I’m using a Mac so this is my experience.
Pinyin with 3rd party Input Managers is great. QIM (QuickCore) doesn’t let you type tones (AFAIK) but you can filter between them with tab. It can remember and prioritize phrases. It also does pinyin initials (nh for nihao).
Translating from E->C or C->E
There’s always Wenlin (for PC too).
Safari (web browser) has a plugin (LiveDictionary)for popup C<->E mouse over translations. I can browse any web page and get translations. Hanzibar for IE (Win) and HanziBar for FireFox (Win/Mac/Linux) also works.
Popup definitions in other apps: LiveDictionary also works with all Cocoa apps. Cocoa is one way OS X apps are made. TextEdit, Preview (for PDFs), Adium (for MSN/Yahoo/AIM/…), Terminal (unix shell), Nisus Writer Express (for Word documents) … all work. Imagine looking at web pages, viewing PDFs, editing Word docs, chatting online, … and having popup translations. LiveDictionary also supports just about any language for which there are free dictionaries.
