newsbytes@clarinet.com (02/04/90)
CAUSEWAY BAY, HONGKONG, 1990 JAN 30 (NB) -- The Hongkong Computer Society has embarked on a scheme to establish international standards for the use of Chinese characters in computing. One of the great advantages of the Chinese language is that, in theory at any rate, any literate Chinese person anywhere in the world can read the writings of any other Chinese, regardless of the spoken dialect. The significance of this becomes especially apparent when you realize that a Cantonese speaker cannot understand the speech of a Shanghainese, or a Pekingese that of a native of Szechuan. They all, however, share exactly the same written language. At least, that is true up to a point. Cantonese - the dialect of Hongkong and neighbouring Guangdong Province - in particular, has its own modern idioms not easily expressed in traditional written Chinese. In any case, in a attempt to facilitate literacy, the Chinese government has long been trying to perfect a simplified system of characters. It requires a knowledge of at least three thousand different traditional characters just to read the simplest newspaper. Other Asian nations also use characters based on Chinese -- the Korean and Japanese languages derived from Chinese, the Japanese have long been using simplified characters and Chinese is one of the official languages of Singapore. Unfortunately, with the exception of some individual characters, Japanese, Chinese and Korean readers are not able to read each other's languages. This is the background to the Hongkong Computer Society's (HKCS) drive to establish international standards. Even without the confusion over differences in characters for the same word arising from the developments outlined above, the widespread use of modern communications technology is hindered by a proliferation of systems for using Chinese characters in computers. The HKCS points out that internationally agreed standards are essential for the input and internal processing of Chinese characters if such developments as EDI - Electronic Data Interchange - are to be accessible to Chinese users. HKCS Chairman Richard Li says different countries and users in the region use different expressions for the same technical terms. To prevent future chaos, some sort of international agreement must be reached. The Society is inviting all interested countries to participate in discussions and presentations on this issue at the Hongkong Computer Conference '90 scheduled for May. It has also extended an invitation to Chinese manufacturers from around the world to demonstrate their various schemes for handling characters. (Norman Wingrove/19900203/Press Contact: Stephen Chung, HKCC '90, + 852 542 1678)