Mandarin Keyboard

[Laurafaulring]

Hello-

I am in the US and I have a nanny who speaks only Mandarin. I use Google translator to translate instructions for her, but there is no way for her to communincate back to me in English. Suggestions?

Is there such a thing as a keyboard that has Mandarin characters so that she can type and respond to me?

Thanks very much for any and all ideas.

[xiaotao]

How about a hand held translator. Some are made especially for the Chinese to learn English, but it also functions well for Chinese learners. Your nanny may or may not like entering the characters because it's more work than speaking or writing on paper. Sometimes the incorrect character pops up and one would have to select the correct character from the menu. Sometimes the translation is not exact but you'll get the mearning.

[renzhe]

There is no "Mandarin keyboard", but depending on how computer-literate your nanny is, she could type Chinese using any keyboard, with pinyin-based input.

It's obviously an imperfect way to communicate, though.

[Hofmann]

The only input method based on Mandarin is phonetic. Windows should have one with the OS. Here's another. Here's another.

[imron]

Suggestions?

Start learning Mandarin It's an opportunity up for the taking.

[YuehanHao]

You may already know it, but I thought it's worth pointing out that sensible phrases from one language (e.g., English) can be plugged into Google translator with the result of generating nonsense or semi-nonsense in another (e.g., Chinese).

For example, my wife once typed me a sentence that I plugged into such an online translator, along the lines of "(Her name) has been feeling annoyed by things recently," which came back as "The plum (an attempted translation of her name) was very bothersome recently." Of course that was not too hard and I figured it out, but at times the machine translations can be too bad to even understand what was intended. Caveat emptor.

Well one more example that might help clarify further. Here is a Chinese song verse and its English translation from Google. I am not sure whether you will be able to grasp the meaning too well from what Google has come up with, but give it a try to see what your nanny may be faced with!

四季流浪的人归来，桃花树上开。

不知当年的小阿妹, 她如今在不在。

朵朵桃花为谁开,

让人悲哀,让人悲哀！

Four Seasons of people wandering the return of peach trees to open.

I do not know the year of small-Mei, and she is now is available.

Fairy Peach for whom open,

Sad Sad!

Too funny. Seems a sport could be made of posting Google translations of (perhaps) well known phrases and challenging others to guess the pre-translated statement!

约翰好

[abcdefg]

File this in the "very clumsy solution" department or in the trash.

I've seen a small USB computer peripheral for sale in China for about 100 RMB which lets a person input Hanzi directly by writing it on a screen with a stylus. Then it is “recognized” and stored by the computer in a document. The setup I tried used MS Word. Your Google tool could work its jolly magic and translate from that.

It's my understanding that these are mainly used by rural Chinese old timers who never learned Pinyin and therefore don’t take to a standard computer keyboard.

I once thought about buying one as a Hanzi practice tool but never did. Stuck with those old grid-ruled Mickey Mouse practice pads that elementary students use. Stacks and stacks of them.

[pancake]

The only input method based on Mandarin is phonetic.

There's also Wubi Hua (based on stroke order) and Wubi Xing. They will probably not be useful in this situation, however, since they require some training to use efficiently (I'm certainly not there yet!)

[Hofmann]

Well, that's based on stroke order isn't it? I said Mandarin.