Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I read Chinese on Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?
- How do I display and type Chinese on my computer?
- Could you tell me how to say my name or some other word in Chinese? Could you send me a picture of "some phrase" translated into Chinese?
How do I read Chinese on Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?
Both of these browsers can support Chinese without any other programs. All you need is the right font, and there are many good free fonts you can download. The best method is to download Microsoft's free language packs and input methods for Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Installing these language packs will automatically set up Internet Explorer for Chinese. Netscape still needs one more step. From Netscape's main menu, select "Edit", then "Preferences". In the window that appears, select "Appearance" and "Fonts". First select "Simplified Chinese" for the encoding, and choose "MS Song" or "MS Hei" for the proportional and fixed length fonts. For the "Traditional Chinese Encoding", select "MingLiU" as the font. Selecting a larger font size might also be easier on your eyes.
Now as you surf around different Chinese websites, two situations may occur. Some web pages "know" that they are in Chinese, and the browser automatically knows to use the Chinese fonts to display them. For web pages that do not have this information, you can manually change to Chinese. On Netscape, this is done from "View" and then "Character Set" on the main menu. On Internet Explorer, this can be done from "View" and then "Fonts".
These fonts will also allow you to read (in Netscape Messager and Outlook) and write (in Outlook) Chinese in e-mails.
The are other fonts you can use on Windows instead of the Microsoft fonts. One possibility is the Bitstream Cyberbit font. The above method should also work with browsers on other operating systems after obtaining Chinese fonts. See the fonts section on this website for more information.
How do I display and type Chinese on my computer?
There are several approaches to working with Chinese on computers.
First is to have the entire operating system support Chinese. This is
the most popular option where the user only deals with Chinese and not
other languages. Microsoft sells both traditional and simplified Chinese versions of its Windows operating system.
Could you tell me how to say my name or some other word in Chinese? Could you send me a
picture of "some phrase" translated into Chinese?
Translation is an exacting process and it can be hard to tell what
meaning you want, even for a short phrase. Also, as a non-native
speaker of Chinese, I might miss the nuances and proper way of saying
what you want. Finally, producing pictures of Chinese is a
time-consuming process. For these reasons, I generally do not respond
to requests for translations or tattoo help. However, I do make
available many resources you can use to look up words. Most useful of
these is the Chinese-English dictionary.
You can also try the
Chinese Discussion Board at Zhongwen.com.
As a final note for tattoo seekers, I would caution people against
trusting a stranger to give them a picture that they will have
permantly drawn into their skin.
.
If you already have an English operating system, then
you can use a program that adds Chinese capabilities to your existing
programs. Program like this include TwinBridge
Chinese Partner and UnionWay for Windows and the
Chinese Language Kit (CLK) for Macintosh. I don't know
of a program like this for Unix.
For an increasing number of programs, all you need is a Chinese font to display Chinese.
These programs incude Netscape Communicator, Office 97, and Microsoft Explorer. You
can find both simplified and traditional Chinese fonts from Microsoft.