8
University Daily Kansan
Campus/Area
Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1985
New computer aids East Asian library
By John Williams Of the Kansan staff
The Chinese language is one of the most difficult foreign languages to learn. Perhaps the only thing more difficult is learning to write the characters that represent Chinese words.
Now, with the aid of a new computer program, students and faculty will no longer have to struggle with writing Chinese characters by hand or with a Chinese typewriter, a professor of East Asian studies said yesterday.
Wallace Johnson, the professor,
said that KU was the first university
to use the "China Star" computer
program, which was written by JHL
Research, of Anaheim, Calif.
although other universities had been
using similar programs.
"We think this is the best program, and it didn't cost all that much, either." he said.
The program cost $770 and was bought in conjunction with a two-year $117,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
The grant will enable Johnson to produce a textbook showing advanced college students how to write a Chinese composition. The textbook should be finished in June, he said.
After Johnson produces the textbook, the program will be turned over to the East Asian Library on the fifth floor of Watson Library and may be used by campus administrators to make brochures telling Chinese students about KU. It also could be used by Kansas officials for letters concerning diplomatic or trade matters.
"Instead of a brochure in English, why not a brochure in their native language?"
The "China Star" program can
recreate 40,000 traditional Chinese characters and 12,000 simplified characters with a simple touch on a computer keyboard.
"Essentially, Chinese characters are graphs, pictures — not things that you would recognize," he said. "Each is distinct and different from the others."
The program also offers Japanese characters and Greek and Russian letters
Vicki Wu, Taipei, Taiwan, graduate student, helped prepare the program for use by the IBM/XT in the East Asian Library, with the help of the Academic Computing Center and IBM technicians from Topeka. "If we didn't have Miss Wu, the program would not be going," Johnson said.
Wu will be the local expert with the program, until more people are trained. She worked through a special studies class to learn how to make Chinese characters using computer graphics and uses that familiarity to run the program.
In a simple demonstration, Wu typed the letter "A" on the keyboard. A Chinese symbol meaning "sun" appeared on the screen.
When she typed in the letter "B" the symbol for "moon" appeared. When she typed both "A" and "B," the separate Chinese characters merged to form a new character meaning "bright."
Wu said more characters would be added later after some problems with the system were solved. One of the problems is that not all of the characters are understandable to Chinese.
"But the program has more than enough characters for our use right now," she said.
Wu said the basics of the program could be learned in an afternoon.
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