Instant Chinese character to Pinyin conversion in MS Word!

[geraldc]

Just got taught a very useful feature of Microsoft word 2002.

If you have the Office Chinese IME installed, you can highlight Chinese text and then go to "Format", "Asian Layout", then "Phonetic guide", it puts pinyin with tone marks over the Chinese characters in your document.

As well as using it to get pinyin for your own compositions you can just paste in text from websites etc, so you get an instant pinyin guide (very useful if like me you keep forgetting the tones).

Pictures of it in action below:

[benotnobody]

A similar function is available within NJStar Chinese Word Processor, if you don't have Office XP.

[pazu]

You can use the same function to convert Japanese Kanji into hiragana (furigana) too. Quite a useful feature.

But for the Chinese conversion, yes, NJSTAR Chi WP works better than the MS Word. Do you notice that if you convert a long article in MS Word, you have to do it a few times...

[skylee]

I now use the 羅馬拼音 of windows 2000, which = hanyu pinyin. But when I do the conversion, I get 注音符號, which I don't understand. Could anyone help?

[geraldc]

I now use the 羅馬拼音 of windows 2000, which = hanyu pinyin. But when I do the conversion, I get 注音符號, which I don't understand. Could anyone help?

Do you still get the problem when you try and convert simplified text to pinyin? A friend's PC had the same problem, simplifed text would convert to pinyin, but traditional text wouldn't.

[skylee]

... well, the problem is I don't use simplified Chinese (if I can choose) ...

[pazu]

Windows is supposed to be able to distinguish a Hanzi as Trad Chinese, Simp Chinese and Japanese, but in reality it can't. So you have to tell them.

1. Go to menu: Format => Reveal Formatting.

2. Highlight the text you want to convert.

3. In the "Reveal Formatting box", choose from "Languages" and select the text (even if they're Trad Chinese characters) as "Chinese (PRC)".

Convert the text into phonetic guide again.

It should work.

Again, try to set the Chinese characters as "Japanese" and see what you get in the phonetics conversion.

It's quite interesting.

[kentsuarez]

geraldc wrote "Do you still get the problem when you try and convert simplified text to pinyin? A friend's PC had the same problem, simplifed text would convert to pinyin, but traditional text wouldn't."

K: well, I type in TradChars, and the function gives me only bopomofo. I can type or paste my own pinyin in its stead, through the ruby text boxes, but this is manual labor. If I go to Tools/Language/Chinese translation, and translate the text to simplified, reselect it and rerun the function, the rubytext boxes are blank, and I get nothing.

Following Pazu's instructions, I go to Word's Formatting menu and there is no "reveal formatting" option. Any advice? Thanks in advance!

[nnt]

I now use the 羅馬拼音 of windows 2000, which = hanyu pinyin. But when I do the conversion, I get 注音符號

,

You don't have to convert anything: Unicode Chinese include both Simplified and Traditional Chinese !

Just go to Tools/languages first and declare the selected words to be "PRC Chinese" instead of "Taiwan Chinese" , and then go to the Format menu : this is what you get after copy/paste outside of Word : 羅(luo2)馬(ma3)

.

[the_p0et]

Maybe I didn't read this thread correctly, but I'm also having a problem of the Phonetic Guide in MS Word only giving me ㄅㄆㄇㄈ. I'm using traditional script, I think... For example, I input the following: 到目前為止都很好 and only get ㄅㄆㄇㄈ.

Thanks.

[nnt]

Maybe I didn't read this thread correctly

Bis repetita:

Just go to Tools/languages first and declare the selected words to be "PRC Chinese" instead of "Taiwan Chinese" , and then go to the Format menu

[the_p0et]

Yes, I did that and now there's nothing. It's completly blank, no bopomofo or pinyin. If I select PRC there's nothing and if I select Taiwan there's only bpmf.

[nnt]

You must use a font which also include Pinyin , i.e Arial Unicode MS, otherwise the missing characters would be blank

[kentsuarez]

nnt: "Just go to Tools/languages first and declare the selected words to be "PRC Chinese" instead of "Taiwan Chinese" , and then go to the Format menu : this is what you get after copy/paste outside of Word : 羅(luo2)馬(ma3) "

K: That didn't work, nor did it when I changed the Asian text font to Arial Unicode MS, then reran the format step. But I tried several more times, and finally tried the format with 'reset default' values, then did it all one more time before it finally worked. Very quirky, but it worked.

So I tried again with a new document and new text, selected PRC Chinese, did the format step and it worked smoothly.

Lesson to share with others: It may not work smoothly if you've already done the "Format", "Asian Layout", then "Phonetic guide" with a Language-Taiwan Chinese setting; but that doesn't mean it can't work; just start over.

So NNT is right: you need to select the text, then change its language to the correct one (PRC if you want pinyin, or Taiwan if you want bopomofo), which does not affect whether the text is simplified or trad itional characters (talk about bad design!!!), AND go to font, change the *Asian* text font to Arial Unicode MS *IF* you want pinyin, ...

...and then and only then go to the "Format", "Asian Layout", then "Phonetic guide" to get your phonetics atop the characters.

Wow, talk about not user friendly!

Thanks again NNT!!!!

[Keiran]

Hi. I'm not sure that I am doing things correctly. I am running the newest version of Windows XP for Tablet edition (pretty cool to write characters by hand on the screen for when I don't know a character and don't have a dictionary handy, but that's another story...)

I have the Chinese language packs installed. I also have the Chinese transcriber addition for SP2. I installed the IME for the bpmf, Chinese traditional quick, Chinese traditional unicode, Chinese Taiwan english, Chinese traditional new phonetic. I have also installed the Chinese PRC IME and the English international (A few of these are slated for removal when I feel like removing them).

My OS is in English and my MS Office is an English install. I have a very small handful of Chinese fonts, so I feel that chinese is fairly well supported.

I am UNable to get any sort of phonetics guide to provide any pinyin or BPMF with my asian layout feature. It says that I am allowed to enter the information myself, but I don't think that was what I had intended.

I tried changing language to whatever I had available. I tried changing the fonts back and forth from asian fonts to non-asian fonts, which weren't accepted, but I thought it might give it a bit more kick if it had to do it itself. I tried and retried. I closed and re-opened Word.

Nothing changed.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the info!

It is a pretty darned exciting feature of word I must say.

[nnt]

I have a very small handful of Chinese fonts, so I feel that chinese is fairly well supported

That's not enough:

Bis repetita again:

You must use a font which also include Pinyin , i.e Arial Unicode MS, otherwise the missing characters would be blank

[Keiran]

HI. I use MS Office word 2003 Professional running on my own and my sister's computer here in my house.

I use Windows XP 2005 for Tablet PC. With SP2 (sure, it got me my multi-language support, but more than doubled my boot time - great peice of work...)

My sister uses Windows XP Home with SP1.

I have set up this feature to work on my friend's computer using a slightly older version of MS word, but I can't seem to get ANYTHING to show up in my ruby text for my asian layout.

I have tried all combinations of fonts, languages and keyboards, including entering text using the pinyin, writing by hand on screen, writing in zhuyin...

This feature will work if I enter text myself.

This feature does NOT provide any actual text as superscript.

Anyone got any ideas as to what I can do, short of uninstalling 2003 and installing word 2002?

I am getting pretty darned frustrated. To be honest, I would actually like to start doing some more advanced writing practice in copying articles by hand (the main reason I chose to buy a tablet, handwriting recognition is little short of awesome and I have the kind of penmanship that would be worthy of a blind three year old who had drunk a few too many kahlua mudslides).

If you don't have any ideas, anyone know who I could email at Microsoft to help me figure it out?

Thanks!

PS. I have passed this tip on to about ten people in just a few days. BIG thanks!

[Keiran]

HI. I use MS Office word 2003 Professional running on my own and my sister's computer here in my house.

I use Windows XP 2005 for Tablet PC. With SP2 (sure, it got me my multi-language support, but more than doubled my boot time - great peice of work...)

My sister uses Windows XP Home with SP1.

I have set up this feature to work on my friend's computer using a slightly older version of MS word, but I can't seem to get ANYTHING to show up in my ruby text for my asian layout.

I have tried all combinations of fonts, languages and keyboards, including entering text using the pinyin, writing by hand on screen, writing in zhuyin...

This feature will work if I enter text myself.

This feature does NOT provide any actual text as superscript.

Anyone got any ideas as to what I can do, short of uninstalling 2003 and installing word 2002?

I am getting pretty darned frustrated. To be honest, I would actually like to start doing some more advanced writing practice in copying articles by hand (the main reason I chose to buy a tablet, handwriting recognition is little short of awesome and I have the kind of penmanship that would be worthy of a blind three year old who had drunk a few too many kahlua mudslides).

If you don't have any ideas, anyone know who I could email at Microsoft to help me figure it out?

Thanks!

PS. I have passed this tip on to about ten people in just a few days. BIG thanks!

[the_p0et]

Kentsuarez, you said that you finally tried the format with 'reset default' values and it worked. I downloaded the Arial Unicode MS font and went through all of these steps that everyone has suggested but still only get bpmf in the phonetic guide with Chinese (Taiwan) and blank with Chinese (PRC) when using the Arial Unicode MS font.

Any other suggestions?

[shacho]

Greetings.

We have encountered this problem repeatedly at my company, and rest assured - it is a bug. You are not using the software wrong. It just doesn't work. Microsoft is currently working on this case for us. They have been able to reproduce the phenomenon, but haven't come up with a solution to date. I will post to this newsgroup again if and when they do. You may be interested to know that the focus right now is on the following registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesMSIME.China

Cheers,

MB