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Language and technology
語言與科技
Typing rebellion
輸入法的叛逆
The Chinese Computer. By Thomas Mullaney.
《中文打字機》，墨磊寧著。
The national Chinese Characters Typing Competition is rarely cause for excitement, but in 2013 it was.
中國全國漢字輸入大賽很少引起人們的興奮，但在2013年卻不一樣。
Huang Zhenyu, a student, produced 222 characters per minute, or 3.7 per second, the equivalent of someone typing more than 200 words per minute in English.
一個名叫黃振宇的學生每分鐘能打出222個漢字，也就是每秒3.7個，這相當于每分鐘打出200多個英文單詞。
(The average typist manages about 40 English words per minute.)
（普通打字員每分鐘大約能打40個英文單詞。）
Mr Huang’s performance was a dramatic moment in one of the Chinese-speaking world’s long-running challenges: how to use the 26 letters on the Western QWERTY keyboard to type thousands of Chinese characters.
黃振宇的表現是華語世界經歷的漫長挑戰中的一個戲劇性時刻：如何使用西方QWERTY鍵盤上的26個字母輸入數千個漢字。
The Chinese language’s lack of an alphabet has been a source of concern.
中文沒有字母表，這一直是令人擔憂的問題。
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it meant Chinese typewriting and telegraphy were much slower.
在19世紀和20世紀初，這意味著中文打字和電報要慢得多。
Leaders including Mao Zedong believed characters were constraining China’s economic and social development.
包括毛主席在內的領導人認為，漢字制約了中國的經濟和社會發展。
He wondered whether they should be ditched altogether in favour of an alphanumeric system.
他在考慮是否應該完全放棄方塊字，轉而采用字母數字系統。
The alphabet anxiety intensified when the personal-computing revolution in the West began to transform the world.
當西方的個人電腦革命開始改變世界時，字母表焦慮加劇了。
Thomas Mullaney, a professor at Stanford University, has written an informative and enjoyable history of how China addressed this crucial technical question.
斯坦福大學教授墨磊寧撰寫了一部信息豐富且引人入勝的歷史書，講述了中國如何解決這一關鍵技術問題。
He observes that Chinese people, when typing on a Western-designed computer or phone, are required to operate entirely in code in order to turn keyboard letters into characters.
他觀察到，中國人在使用西方設計的電腦或手機打字時，需要完全使用代碼才能將鍵盤字母轉換為漢字。
As late as 1989, one of America’s most eminent linguists wrote that, compared with Western languages, “There is not, and I believe never can be, as efficient a system for inputting and outputting Chinese characters.”
直到1989年，美國最杰出的語言學家之一寫道，與西方語言相比，“現在沒有，而且我相信永遠也不會有像西方語言這么高效的漢字輸入和輸出系統”。
In alphanumeric languages, what you type is what you get.
在字母數字語言中，你輸入什么就有什么。
In Chinese, it never is.
在中文中，情況從來不是這樣。
“The Chinese Computer” zeroes in on some forgotten but memorable characters.
《中文打字機》關注了一些已被遺忘但值得記住的人物。
Kao Chung-Chin worked with IBM in the 1940s to develop the electric Chinese typewriter using a different four-number code for every character.
高仲芹在20世紀40年代與IBM合作開發了電子中文打字機，用四個數字代表每個漢字。
Samuel Caldwell, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke no Chinese but developed a system whereby each key on the QWERTY keyboard represented a brush stroke in a character; typing the first few strokes linked to a photographic storage matrix.
麻省理工學院教授塞繆爾·考德威爾不會說中文，但開發了一個系統，其中QWERTY鍵盤上的每個鍵代表漢字的一個筆畫，輸入前幾個筆畫就會鏈接到一個照片存儲矩陣。
(Caldwell, therefore, unwittingly invented the “autocomplete” function in the 1950s, decades before it would become a time-saving smartphone feature.)
（因此，考德威爾在20世紀50年代就無意中發明了“自動完成”功能，比它成為節省時間的智能手機功能早了幾十年。）
In the 1970s China contemplated abandoning QWERTY altogether and produced huge keyboards of characters.
20世紀70年代，中國考慮完全放棄QWERTY鍵盤，并制作了巨大的漢字鍵盤。
But from the 1980s onwards, new “structure-based” input systems flourished, such as wubi (the system used by Mr Huang).
但從20世紀80年代起，新的“基于結構”的輸入法開始蓬勃發展，如五筆輸入法（也是黃振宇使用的輸入法）。
In those methods, each QWERTY key correlates with a different visual component of a character so, typed consecutively, they form a full character.
在這些方法中，每個QWERTY鍵都代表漢字中的一個不同字形組成部分，因此連續按鍵，就會形成一個完整的漢字。
The lure of the Chinese market meant Western computer companies were eager for a solution.
中國市場的誘惑意味著西方計算機公司熱切地渴望找到一個解決方案。
And, for all its tricksiness, the QWERTY keyboard has prevailed.
而且，盡管QWERTY鍵盤過于復雜，但它還是（在中國市場）占據了主導地位。
Of the different codes it is pinyin, which writes characters phonetically using the Roman alphabet, that has won the day.
在各種編碼方式中，拼音贏得了勝利，拼音用羅馬字母拼寫漢字的發音。
Type in a Chinese sound using Latin letters—tong, for instance—and a menu appears of the most commonly used characters with that sound.
用拉丁字母輸入一個中文發音——比如tong——然后一個菜單就會出現，其中包含具有該發音的最常用的一些漢字。
It has been greatly helped by the fact that the Communist Party has taught pinyin in schools for decades.
幾十年來，黨一直要求學校教拼音，這對拼音輸入法的普及有很大的幫助。
Whoever thought that a book about “hypographic semiotics” could be so absorbing?
誰能想到一本關于“亞圖形符號學”的書會如此有趣？
Geeks will enjoy the computing conundrums and Sinophiles will love the history; laymen, too, will learn plenty.
極客們會喜歡書中的計算機難題，而喜愛中國文化的人則會熱愛這段歷史，外行人也會了解很多東西。
Mr Mullaney points out that half the world’s population uses scripts that require workarounds with a QWERTY keyboard.
墨磊寧指出，世界上一半人口使用的字母系統在用QWERTY鍵盤輸入時需要變通處理。
This is a global issue of which few Westerners are aware.
這是一個全球性的問題， 很少有西方人意識到這一點。
China has, he writes, “saved the Western-designed computer...from its foundational limitations”.
他寫道，中國已經“將西方設計的計算機......從其根本性限制中拯救了出來”。
Mr Mullaney’s book does not cover the current tech wars between China and America.
墨磊寧的書并未涵蓋當前中美之間的科技戰爭。
It does, however, underline the impressive progress China has achieved in computing.
但這本書凸顯了中國在計算機領域取得的令人矚目的進展。
For decades the country has been fighting—and typing—with one hand tied behind its back.
數十年來，這個國家一直在一只手被綁在背后的情況下進行斗爭和打字。
