Asian Languages Word-Processing

Overview

Characters in some Non-Roman languages are difficult to write, especially for non-native speakers. Some traditional Chinese characters, for example, have as many as over 20 strokes. When students struggle to put the characters on paper, they are more like drawing rather than writing a language. It is not only time-consuming, but often with little reward. MS Word on Windows 2000 and Windows XP offers excellent word processing environments for Non-Roman languages such as Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese. It would be beneficial to the students of language classes if they are taught how to do word processing in those languages.

Before Windows 2000 was launched, one had to have software for the specific language in order to process that language on computer. For example, if you want to write Chinese on the computer, you must have some Chinese language software. If your Chinese software can only allow you to input Chinese but does not do editing and formatting jobs, you would need both an English word processing software, such as Microsoft Word, and a Chinese word processing software to get the job done. But the two kinds of software are not always compatible, thus causing a lot of headaches. With Word 2000 and Windows 2000, this has been changed. Now you do not need any Chinese software to do Chinese word processing. The same is true with Hebrew, Japanese and Korean, for Windows 2000 supports those and many other languages.

Word Processing in Chinese

To set up the environment for Chinese word processing using Microsoft Word on Windows 2000 is easy. Go to "Start" menu. Select Settings--Control Panel--Regional Options. In the dialogue box that appears, click the Input Locales tab. Click the Add button. A small Add Input Locale dialogue box will appear. In the Input locale pull-down menu, you will find five input locales of Chinese: Hong Kong, Macau, PRC, Singapore, and Taiwan. You can choose any one of the five. Then in the Keyboard layout/IME pull-down menu, choose Chinese (Simplifed) – MS Pinyin(98). Click OK in the small Add Input Locale dialogue box. Click Apply in the large dialogue box. Then click OK. That’s it! However, you have to restart the computer before you can activate the newlyadded language-input function.

To set up the environment for word processing in Chinese and other Asian languages on Windows XP, go to the Start menu, and select Settings—Control Panel. Double click Regional and Language Options. In the dialogue box that pops up, click the tab that says Languages. Then click Details. Click the Add… button. In the Input Language pull-down menu, select Chinese (PRC), and check the Keyboard Layout/IME check box. In the Keyboard Layout/IME pull-down menu, select Chinese (Simplified) – Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0. or 微软拚音3.0版 depending on what you have. Click OK in the Add Input Language dialogue box. Click Apply in the Text Services and Input Languages box. Click OK. Click the Apply button in the Regional and Language Options dialogue box. Click OK. And you are done. However, you also have to restart the machine in order for the newly-added language to activate.

After setting up the function for Chinese Word processing, you only need to activate this function. To activate it: after opening Word, click on the EN icon. Select Chinese (PRC), and you can start to type Chinese.

If your computer has been set up for the input of more than one language, then it is much easier to add the input of one or more languages. After opening Word, right click the icon EN on the toolbar at the right lower corner of the screen and click on Properties. In the dialogue box, click the Add… button. Then in the Input locale pull-down menu, you will find five input locales for Chinese: Hong Kong, Macau, PRC, Singapore, and Taiwan. You can choose any one of the five. Then in the Keyboard layout/IME pull-down menu, choose Chinese (Simplifed) – MS Pinyin(98). An IME status toolbar will appear either on the left lower corner or the top of the screen. If it does not appear, for Windows 2000 you can click the pencil & notebook icon at the right lower corner and select Show IME status. For Windows XP, please click on the CH icon and check Show the Language bar. On the Language bar, please click the little drop-down arrow and make sure the 简 Charset is checked. Using the Language bar, you can either click the characters 中 or 英 to shift between inputting Chinese and English, or you can simply hit the shift key on the keyboard to do so. You can also choose to enter either traditional or simplified Chinese by clicking on the 简 or 繁 icon on the Language bar. The Language bar also enables you to shift between English and Chinese punctuations as well as providing a comprehensive Help menu.

The greatest advantage of inputting Chinese using MS Word 2000 in Windows 2000 is that you can continuously type Pinyin of the sentences or paragraphs, and the system will automatically choose the most possible Chinese phrases and sentences you want to enter. Therefore, you no longer have to choose between words with the same or similar pronunciation. This function saves a lot of time and energy, and greatly increases the speed of input. As can be expected, sometimes the words and phrases may not be the ones you intend to enter. When this happens, you can move the cursor to the words or phrases you want to change, and reenter the Pinyin of the words. Then, when the words are still underlined by dots, highlight the words, and a list of choices will appear. Select the words you want. This way of input is much more efficient than the old ways in which you have to choose from a list of words after entering the Pinyin of almost every word.

Word Processing in Hindi

Setting up an environment for entering the Hindi language is similar to what we said above for Chinese (see above). Go to the Start menu, and select Settings—Control Panel. Double click Regional and Language Options. In the dialogue box that pops up, click the tab that says Languages. Then click Details. Click the Add… button. In the Input Language pull-down menu, select Hindi, select the default “keyboard layout/IME.” Click OK in the Add Input Language dialogue box. Click Apply in the Text Services and Input Languages box. Click OK. Click the Apply button in the Regional and Language Options dialogue box. Click OK. And you are done.

After setting up the function for Hindi Word processing, you only need to activate this function. To activate it: after opening Word, click on the EN icon at the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Select Hindi, and you can start to enter Hindi.

Word Processing in Japanese

The steps for setting up an environment for Japanese word processing using Word 2000 in Windows 2000 are the same as for Chinese or Hindi (see above). The only difference is that you choose Japanese in both the Input locale and the Keyboard layout/IME boxes.

After an environment for Japanese word processing is set up, a toolbar appears at the lower right corner of the screen, just above the input mode selection toolbar. By clicking on the first icon on the toolbar, you can choose to enter either English or Japanese in Hiragana. There are also several different ways to enter Japanese: Hiragana, Full-width Katakana, Half-width Katakana, and Kanji. It is easy to shift between any of them: you just click on the icon for Input mode and choose the mode you want. The software also has special features for entering Japanese names. To do this, you click on the 般 icon and choose Bias for names. In addition, you can add frequently used words or examples to customize your dictionary so that your input efficiency can be further improved.

Word Processing in Korean

Setting up an environment for entering the Korean language is similar to what we said above for Chinese, Hindi, and Japanese (see above). After clicking the Add… button, choose Korean in the Input locale box and Korean (Hangul) (MS-IME98) in the Keyboard layout/IME box. A toolbar at the lower right corner of the screen with three icons, the letter A at the left and the character 漢 at the right indicates that the environment has been set for entering Korean. The A icon is a Korean/English toggle button. By clicking on this button, you can shift from English to Korean and back. When A is the icon, you are entering English. When you click it and the icon changes to a Korean character, you can enter Korean. The icon (resembling an open book) in the middle is the fullwidth/halfwidth toggle, which refers to the space each letter occupies. For example, ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　ｆｕｌｌ　ｗｉｄｔｈ，and this is half width. The icon at the right end with the character 漢 is for Hanja conversion.

After setting up the function for Korean Word processing, you only need to activate this function. To activate it: after opening Word, click on the EN icon at the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Select Korean, and you can start to enter Korean.

Q: Where can I find a computer lab to do Asian language word processing on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus?

A: There are 15 Windows XP computers in the CLA Language Center walk-in computer lab located in 135 Jones Hall. PC01 to PC15 in 135 Jones are all Windows XP machines. Besides, all the computers in the CLA Language Center’s instructional lab of Jones Hall 10 and 15 and the Portable Lab are Windows XP machines.