HELP ! Simplified Chinese <- >Traditional Chinese Hi, I have been using OOo for some times. Sorry that I cannot write in Chinese because I am not using a localised Windows98. I have a problem:- Since I created documents in OOo writer which uses UTF8 as its internal encoding, I thought I can simply change the font so that I can read it in either simplified or traditional Chinese. The result :- I got word that are displayed properly and some are simply shown as ??. Can someone help please?

Writing it in UTF-8 doesn't mean you can switch to big5 or gb to view the document. UTF-8's benefit is that you don't have to install all those different coding around the world (e.g. big5, gb) in order to read those certain codes.

Using UTF-8, people only need to have unicode support in order to read your work.

Go to zh.openoffice.org.
Look in "file"

There is a download there that lets you convert between unicode, big5, and gb.

Thanks for the link. I have tried using similar programmes found elsewhere but I always for the 'new' Big5 document in garbled codes that cannot be displayed properly at all. I mean the ENTIRE Big5 document just consists of garbelled text.

One further question, does the program that you pointed out works with .sxw files or do I have to save it to .txt or encoded text or something else before conversion?.

Thanks

Thanks for the link. I have tried using similar programmes found elsewhere but I always for the 'new' Big5 document in garbled codes that cannot be displayed properly at all. I mean the ENTIRE Big5 document just consists of garbelled text.

One further question, does the program that you pointed out works with .sxw files or do I have to save it to .txt or encoded text or something else before conversion?.

Thanks

Hi to all, I found a solution - not very elegant though... This is what I did: 1.open the original simplified chinese document in OOo and copy the texts that I want to convert. 2.go tohttp://omniboard.hypermart.net/tool/convertb5.html. Here I must make sure that the page encoding of my browser is set to GBK or GB2313 (but not HZ-GB2313). 3.Then paste the text in the text area and click convert. 4.The result will be garbled until I set the page encoding of my browser to Big5. Bingo!!! :lol: Just a small issue: Certain texts are still in its simplified form eg 計<划 >instead of 計<畫> and <复>健 instead of <復>健. Are these simplified words also formally regconised under the Taiwan's own simplified characters? can any Chinese language teacher please help? :roll:

The program just run through the whole file and look for codes that it can convert. I haven't look at how .sxw is formatted so I'm not quite sure if it'll translate the file.

Simplified "Chinese" was suppose to be used when writting so that people can write faster. I know know when they start to use it on books also. But it's certainly not good because many old Chinese literatures and books cannot be translate to Simplified Chinese at all (since meanings will probably be messed up and become not understandable and sometimes, name of place will be messed up also). Many history teachers in mainland had already complain that teaching history students gets harder and harder because many young people don't know traditional Chinese anymore. I just hope they will ignore the political problems and care more about the continuity of our culture. (not to mension that the creation of it is so out of 六書)

Taiwan's own simplified characters? (??)

Thanks for your reply.

You may write in Chinese, I find it more at home :). I'm a Malaysian Chinese (that is a Malaysian by birth as my family originated from China). I have problem with my Win98 (English) as the MS IME doesn't seem to work. Nevermind the small glitch, I am switching to Linux anyway.

.sxw is actually a .zip file containing several files like contents.xml, layout-cache, meta.xml etc. Just rename the .sxw file under MS dos promt and open the .zip file with winzip, it is all there. The raw content of the .sxw is contained in the content.xml file.

I then copy and paste the content of the content.xml file into a new writer document and save it as encoded tect before passing it to convertz for conversion.

as far as I can see from the readme-big5 file that comes with the convertz programme, it does not convert any binary file like ms .doc, .xls etc.

as to your opinion of the 'loss' when the younger generation do not understant old books or cripture, I totally agree with you. However as for myself, I do find that the use of simplified version has its benefits too.

Well, writing with it is understandable because it may save time. But I don't see why it's used in books also.

If I'm not wronged, even before the communists come into power, 國民黨 already had some proposals of simplifying Chinese, with the theory of 『正書草寫』, just like many western countries. Before, 草書 is kind of "private" writings which may not be understandable by everyone. So to standardise a set of 草書 for normal use is totally reasonable.

Some people argue 簡體 is easier to learn.
But the point is that when a person learn how to write when they're small, it just doesn't make much different. Children do learn very fast. If you compare me with someone from mainland, I don't think I'll have less knowledge or know less words than normal people in mainland.

And another point is that some of their simplifications is kind of meaningless and some even make total confusion when reading older literatures or poems. I mean, like something with 『言』字邊, when I am writing this, my 『言』 part is actualy very similar or the same as the current "simplified Chinese". But when printing it out, it makes the word looks ugly. Another example is that『后』 and『後』 are totally different things, how can they use 『后』as『後』? That's degrading Chinese.

There were very limited number of words in Chinese long time ago. People expend the word set because it makes the meaning more clear and hence need less time to "analyse the meaning of words" when reading. Some simplified Chinese words are totally a "fall back" in this one.

I've been thinking about this problem for a few years, but still can't see the reason of having those simplified Chinese on books (well, they can't use simplified Chinese in old Chinese books I think).參照：

Share your sentiment. I'm in a way lucky in that when I was in school, I was tought both the Traditional+BoPoMoFo and Simplified Chinese+Hanyu Pinyin, but the policy eventually changes to only teaches Simplified Chinese alongside with Hanyu Pinyin. I have at lease about 3 years being thought the traditional Chinese and pronunciation system before switching totally to the Simplified version. The younder generation are at loss...

However due to lack practice, I don't really remember how to write the traditional Chinese characters and using BoPoMoFo...