Re: Translation of amateur Chinese military article, take a look!
So Chinese is a good language with a superior writing system. But it is hobbled now by the use of a multitude of computer input methods. If Chinese was to choose one, superior, input method it would become unbeatable and the favorite second language of the world, in a hundred years time.
The method I mentioned before, in another thread, works, if I understand it rightly, in the following way:
There are 8 types of stokes in Chinese writing and each is represented by a single key. By hitting a key you prepare to write the character who's writing begins with that stoke and is most commonly used and then you hit the space bar. If that is not the character you want you hit the key representing the next stoke and continue until you get the right character and then you hit can the space bar. The claim is that on average you need to hit just less than three keys and the space bar, while in English you need to type five letters and the space bar to type a word. If a Chinese character represents more than one word the advantage is pretty large.
I got your point but I think you may not present it to OTHER members well.
First, if you know what is
pinyin, then you would know that 90% of Chinese netizens (including me) to key in the latin letters of romanized
PRONUNCIATION of Chinese character(s), and through the native-created (not the crappy MS IME) pinyin input system, to find out the respective Chinese characers with this PRONUNCIATION. - Pronunciation is nothing, any of your typing means nothing, untill you find the corrosponding words in the input system. This way of input, have a very high collision rate, that you need to flip a lot to find a correct character (and damn slow), or input wrongly (and damn quick). People still uses this the most, cause everything is on an ordinary keyboard, you don't need to remember anything extra, rather than the pinyin.
Second, I believe the input method you are talking, are the "FIVE BI INPUT", bi is "bi hua" for short, means one continuous manual "drawing" of a line, when handwriting Chinese character (ie. 口， 门 these two words, got 3 bi, go figure) - In the digital age, a genius come out the thinking that every Chinese character, can be de-composed into segements, that their first few "bi"s can be easily categorized into data base consisting of thousands of Chinese characters, thus forms the 五笔字型.
The Wu bi input method is super fast, very accurate, and gives anyone a better understaning of Chinese when practice (The soul of Chinese character lies in its composition, not the pronunciation) it. The catch is that the user need to memorize how each key on the keyboard representing which segments of a character. And if Chinese people around the world gives you an impression of "
they are a hardworking bunch", let me tell you this - Chinese people are cunningly lazy, whenever there is an alternative. - 90% of Chinese netizens using pinyin input, that's several hundred million people we are talking about.
Last, the advantage of Chinese language in this digital age, is even more potent. Every latin letter has been represented by 1 byte in digital form, you need a few letters to form a word that is meaningful, a few words to form a phrase. Every Chinese character has been represented by 2 bytes in digital form, and on top of "Chinese character each having its own coherent meaning", a few characters can forming a well comprehended phrase. If same context of text, writing in Chinese is thiner than in English, it is even much more lighter in digital form.
Take a comparison with the current project siege and few other good people are working for, the J-20 related artical. It is more scientific than art, and the Chinese artical is still surely thiner than any language it would translated to, this is not because of the crew who translates are not capable - it happens at UN, it surely happens anywhere else.
