Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī Converter

[Takeshi]

Does anyone know a Hokkien Character to Pe̍h-ōe-jī (or similar system) converter?

I don't know Hokkien at all, but I want to be able to sing Hokkien songs at karaoke, and the best way to sing songs in a language you don't know is to study the phonology and use a romanization system to know exactly what the sounds you are supposed to say are; this would be much more successful than just... guessing at the lyrics (which is what I do now to various degrees of success).

Unfortunately, it seems pretty much impossible to find romanized Hokkien lyrics of songs anywhere (especially non-adhoc romanizations). So, the only way about it is to do it myself.

I realize that Hokkien characters have 10 million different readings and Hokkien lyrics in songs are extra confusing because they seem to me (I'm not sure) to be using random characters to express words that don't have a character, and I guess people are just supposed to know what it's supposed to be. I don't mind if the converter is not fully automatic and will give me a few different readings for each character I put in; I suppose I can and will have to sort through to get the right reading. If indeed Hokkien songs use adhoc characters in lyrics, then I suppose I'd also need my converter to be able to tell me what certain characters are often ad-hoc-ily used as replacements for. This might be hard.

I know I could check up every word in a dictionary or something, but that might take a bit too much time. >_< So... like a converter that could automate the process somewhat would help I guess. Any ideas? (If there really is nothing then, people recommend what you think the best dictionary for this purpose will be.)

I know the best solution is to just learn Hokkien myself, but that's quite a feat to acheieve.

[Michaelyus]

It's bad enough for Cantonese! There are a few good websites, and a few pieces of software, but there's not the flexibility or scope that I need... (sigh).

For Taiwanese Hokkien, the online resources I knew were confined to dictionaries that go offline from time to time (the 台文/華文線頂辭典 and the 台語線頂字典 are my first stops; thereafter I might consult what I call the 'Holodict': the 臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典).

But as for actual converters, according to the Tâi-oân Lô-má-jī Hia̍p-hōe, there is a macro for Microsoft Word and a plug-in for Firefox that converts the tone numbers into real pe̍h-ōe-jī; the link for the plug-in for Google Chrome looks like it's now defunct.

Not tried them out myself ... am wondering when the 閩 variety I'm interested in gets a look-in (or whether I'll actually have to teach myself some real computing skills).

[Takeshi]

Haha, yea, I know what you mean. Actually Cantonese has a plethora of resources compared to any other Chinese dialect. Cantodict: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/ is pretty good and has most of my needs covered. At least Cantonese has a de-facto standard for colloquial writing; I can't imagine how hard it would be to learn Hokkien because you really can't write it, and as far as I know, you can't really use 閩音 to comprehend Standard Chinese. (I hope someone is going to tell me I'm wrong for this one XD)

I would want to learn Hokkien one day, but I really have to learn Cantonese first I think, haha.

I guess the only way is to go through a 字典 one by one? Sounds like a lot of work. x_x The Firefox plugin doesn't seem to work for me either.

[OneEye]

I don't know of any converter that will do the trick for you, but I also don't see a need to learn the language or look up every character in a dictionary in order to be able to transcribe song lyrics. I think if you could learn Hokkien phonology well enough to transcribe the syllables (which shouldn't take very long), that would be good enough, right?

[Takeshi]

I don't trust myself I guess is the main thing. Especially for tones, though I suppose for songs I can just ignore tones and probably live if I sing the melody right. Are tones important in Hokkien songs? I wouldn't know. (Like in Mandarin songs for the most part they aren't thaaat important, but like in Cantonese songs the melody fits with the tone; either way you don't really need to know the tones just to sing if you go along with the melody, but I suppose for Cantonese at least it can help a little.)

Maybe after I do this for a couple songs I might be good enough to do it myself... but I doubt it. XD

But hmm, if I'm going through all that trouble I might as well lightly dabble in Hokkien a bit. Not sure how/where to start though.

[Michaelyus]

There are meant to be lots of parsers in academic development though. E.g. here and here.

Online, I suppose you can get tone numbers converted to proper pe̍h-ōe-jī here (even though that's not it's main function).

I found something that converts pe̍h-ōe-jī to mixed 漢字/pe̍h-ōe-jī script here; on the same website it also has a funky 華-to-台 conversion applet (where any 漢字 that does not have a Taiwanese reading deemed acceptable is converted into tone number and romanisation [e.g. 的、能、在]; whilst those that have equivalent characters specific Taiwanese are converted into that character [e.g. 他 becoming 伊]; any 華語漢字 that are deemed to be OK in Taiwanese are preserved without romanisation. It seems to distinguish words; compare 這 and 這個、我 and 我們、你 and 你們、還 and 還是).

But what we've all been waiting for is... this; same website as the stuff in the last paragraph, developed by Jer-min Tsai. However, you cannot paste into it. Better start flexing those typing fingers. Also, any characters not accepted in Taiwanese are not romanised (e.g. 們). Naturally the above stuff requires 繁體字.

EDIT: You can drag stuff into the Java applet, it seems!

EDIT: You can drag stuff in sometimes, it seems.

[Lu]

Here is a relevant thread:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/15439-hokkienminnan-pinyin/, including two transliterated songs and some resources and discussion.