评论
打印
Culture
文艺版块
Book review
书评
Language and technology
语言与科技
Typing rebellion
输入法的叛逆
The Chinese Computer. By Thomas Mullaney.
《中文打字机》，墨磊宁著。
The national Chinese Characters Typing Competition is rarely cause for excitement, but in 2013 it was.
中国全国汉字输入大赛很少引起人们的兴奋，但在2013年却不一样。
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.
一个名叫黄振宇的学生每分钟能打出222个汉字，也就是每秒3.7个，这相当于每分钟打出200多个英文单词。
(The average typist manages about 40 English words per minute.)
（普通打字员每分钟大约能打40个英文单词。）
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.
黄振宇的表现是华语世界经历的漫长挑战中的一个戏剧性时刻：如何使用西方QWERTY键盘上的26个字母输入数千个汉字。
The Chinese language’s lack of an alphabet has been a source of concern.
中文没有字母表，这一直是令人担忧的问题。
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it meant Chinese typewriting and telegraphy were much slower.
在19世纪和20世纪初，这意味着中文打字和电报要慢得多。
Leaders including Mao Zedong believed characters were constraining China’s economic and social development.
包括毛主席在内的领导人认为，汉字制约了中国的经济和社会发展。
He wondered whether they should be ditched altogether in favour of an alphanumeric system.
他在考虑是否应该完全放弃方块字，转而采用字母数字系统。
The alphabet anxiety intensified when the personal-computing revolution in the West began to transform the world.
当西方的个人电脑革命开始改变世界时，字母表焦虑加剧了。
Thomas Mullaney, a professor at Stanford University, has written an informative and enjoyable history of how China addressed this crucial technical question.
斯坦福大学教授墨磊宁撰写了一部信息丰富且引人入胜的历史书，讲述了中国如何解决这一关键技术问题。
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.
他观察到，中国人在使用西方设计的电脑或手机打字时，需要完全使用代码才能将键盘字母转换为汉字。
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，美国最杰出的语言学家之一写道，与西方语言相比，“现在没有，而且我相信永远也不会有像西方语言这么高效的汉字输入和输出系统”。
In alphanumeric languages, what you type is what you get.
在字母数字语言中，你输入什么就有什么。
In Chinese, it never is.
在中文中，情况从来不是这样。
“The Chinese Computer” zeroes in on some forgotten but memorable characters.
《中文打字机》关注了一些已被遗忘但值得记住的人物。
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世纪40年代与IBM合作开发了电子中文打字机，用四个数字代表每个汉字。
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.
麻省理工学院教授塞缪尔·考德威尔不会说中文，但开发了一个系统，其中QWERTY键盘上的每个键代表汉字的一个笔画，输入前几个笔画就会链接到一个照片存储矩阵。
(Caldwell, therefore, unwittingly invented the “autocomplete” function in the 1950s, decades before it would become a time-saving smartphone feature.)
（因此，考德威尔在20世纪50年代就无意中发明了“自动完成”功能，比它成为节省时间的智能手机功能早了几十年。）
In the 1970s China contemplated abandoning QWERTY altogether and produced huge keyboards of characters.
20世纪70年代，中国考虑完全放弃QWERTY键盘，并制作了巨大的汉字键盘。
But from the 1980s onwards, new “structure-based” input systems flourished, such as wubi (the system used by Mr Huang).
但从20世纪80年代起，新的“基于结构”的输入法开始蓬勃发展，如五笔输入法（也是黄振宇使用的输入法）。
In those methods, each QWERTY key correlates with a different visual component of a character so, typed consecutively, they form a full character.
在这些方法中，每个QWERTY键都代表汉字中的一个不同字形组成部分，因此连续按键，就会形成一个完整的汉字。
The lure of the Chinese market meant Western computer companies were eager for a solution.
中国市场的诱惑意味着西方计算机公司热切地渴望找到一个解决方案。
And, for all its tricksiness, the QWERTY keyboard has prevailed.
而且，尽管QWERTY键盘过于复杂，但它还是（在中国市场）占据了主导地位。
Of the different codes it is pinyin, which writes characters phonetically using the Roman alphabet, that has won the day.
在各种编码方式中，拼音赢得了胜利，拼音用罗马字母拼写汉字的发音。
Type in a Chinese sound using Latin letters—tong, for instance—and a menu appears of the most commonly used characters with that sound.
用拉丁字母输入一个中文发音——比如tong——然后一个菜单就会出现，其中包含具有该发音的最常用的一些汉字。
It has been greatly helped by the fact that the Communist Party has taught pinyin in schools for decades.
几十年来，党一直要求学校教拼音，这对拼音输入法的普及有很大的帮助。
Whoever thought that a book about “hypographic semiotics” could be so absorbing?
谁能想到一本关于“亚图形符号学”的书会如此有趣？
Geeks will enjoy the computing conundrums and Sinophiles will love the history; laymen, too, will learn plenty.
极客们会喜欢书中的计算机难题，而喜爱中国文化的人则会热爱这段历史，外行人也会了解很多东西。
Mr Mullaney points out that half the world’s population uses scripts that require workarounds with a QWERTY keyboard.
墨磊宁指出，世界上一半人口使用的字母系统在用QWERTY键盘输入时需要变通处理。
This is a global issue of which few Westerners are aware.
这是一个全球性的问题， 很少有西方人意识到这一点。
China has, he writes, “saved the Western-designed computer...from its foundational limitations”.
他写道，中国已经“将西方设计的计算机......从其根本性限制中拯救了出来”。
Mr Mullaney’s book does not cover the current tech wars between China and America.
墨磊宁的书并未涵盖当前中美之间的科技战争。
It does, however, underline the impressive progress China has achieved in computing.
但这本书凸显了中国在计算机领域取得的令人瞩目的进展。
For decades the country has been fighting—and typing—with one hand tied behind its back.
数十年来，这个国家一直在一只手被绑在背后的情况下进行斗争和打字。
