Simplified to Traditional converter

[Insectosaurus]

Hi,

 

Anyone know of a somewhat reliable online tool to convert simplified characters to traditional characters, that follow the mainland standard (i.e. 説 rather than 說, 于 rather than 於). I know there will always be some errors that I will have to fix manually, but the fewer errors, the quicker that editing process would become.

[Demonic_Duck]

I didn't even know there was a current mainland standard for traditional. And I always thought sad traditional 說 was the only traditional version of angry simplified 说 (well the only one in Unicode anyway), didn't know there was an angry traditional 説 too.

 

There are many online simplified to traditional converters of varying quality, but as far as I know they all use Taiwan (or possibly HK) standards for the traditional output.

[Insectosaurus]

21 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

I didn't even know there was a current mainland standard for traditional.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_General_Standard_Chinese_Characters

https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/通用规范汉字表#附件1._规范字与繁体字、异体字对照表

 

21 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

There are many online simplified to traditional converters of varying quality, but as far as I know they all use Taiwan (or possibly HK) standards for the traditional output.

 

Yeah, I'm using the PurpleCulture one at the moment and it's decent but also a bit inconsistent (sometimes it provides the mainland variant, sometimes the Taiwan variant).

 

Such a converter probably doesn't exist (considering my reason for using it is more out of personal interest than there being much practical use for it, since I can already read both simplified and traditional), but I thought I might as well ask.

[imron]

https://translate.google.com

[Demonic_Duck]

8 minutes ago, imron said:

https://translate.google.com

 

I'm only getting sad 說s from that ?

 

[Insectosaurus]

7 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

I'm only getting sad 說s from that

 

Yes, it also, like Sogou, sometimes changes the words/terms completely (something PurpleCulture does not).

[Demonic_Duck]

It's possible they use English as a bridge language. Sounds ludicrous when "translating" Chinese to Fancy Chinese, but it's not unheard of in the translation industry, as mainland vs Taiwan vs HK etc have a lot of different usages.

[Lu]

3 hours ago, Demonic_Duck said:

It's possible they use English as a bridge language. Sounds ludicrous when "translating" Chinese to Fancy Chinese, but it's not unheard of in the translation industry, as mainland vs Taiwan vs HK etc have a lot of different usages.

It's possible Google doesn't just do this because of actual different usage, but because that's just how the engine has been set up. As far as I know, everything goes through English.

[NinKenDo]

On 8/25/2021 at 11:28 PM, Demonic_Duck said:

I didn't even know there was a current mainland standard for traditional.

 

Yup, and just like Hong Kong vs Taiwan differences, both form and stroke order are different, I find the Chinese Traditional standard to be a bit closer to Japanese standards anecdotally, which is kind of surprising.

 

Unfortunately I don't know any such tool, you'd possibly need two, one to get traditional forms, then another to convert Taiwan trad to China trad.

 

I thought Wenlin could sort of do this, i.e., that it would ask you to clear up ambiguities when converting Simplified to Traditional, with Chinese traditional being one of the options, but seems like I imagined it. Maybe it's buried in an options menu somewhere, I dunno.

[蘇東poo]

I live in Taiwan, locals use google translate. 
 

The real question is, why do you need to convert characters to the Chinese version of 整體? Who’s going to read that? Certainly not Chinese people. Taiwanese people look at that and think 幹三小… I honestly don’t think a mainland  person would pick up the differences between the two anyway, it’s all Chinese to them… 

[shawky.nasr]

Many developers using OpenCC, you can try it. Still there are some issues. If you find mistakes, you can share it to developers on GitHub.

OpenCC

demo

 

But, my advice use books or e-version of books like：

简化字繁体字对照字典

繁简字对照字典 （2007）

简化字繁体字异体字对照字典 （2016 and 2020）

汉字简繁正异对照字典 (2018)  崇文书局

简化字繁体字异体字对照字典(2019)

[NinKenDo]

Wow, OpenCC looks great, covers all the standards. Dope.

[Insectosaurus]

OpenCC does not seem to cover 通用规范汉字表 unless I'm just not seeing it. However it still looks to be the best hanzi converter I've encountered, so a big thanks no matter what. I tried 吸烟于健康有害 which I'm pretty sure should stay the same in Mainland traditional. Or perhaps it does support it, but not in the demo (it sounds like it on the github page)? I don't know how to use the other version.

 

Using books wouldn't speed up the process in any way, unfortunately.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:14 PM, 蘇東poo said:

Who’s going to read that? Certainly not Chinese people.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:14 PM, 蘇東poo said:

Taiwanese people look at that and think 幹三小

 

Most likely neither mainland Chinese or Taiwanese people are going to be reading my Anki deck, you're absoultely right.

 

On 8/28/2021 at 2:14 PM, 蘇東poo said:

 I honestly don’t think a mainland  person would pick up the differences between the two anyway, it’s all Chinese to them… 

 

 

Color/colour, Dr./Dr, mesmerize/mesmerise, neighbor/neighbour, traveller/traveler.

[shawky.nasr]

On 9/1/2021 at 4:27 PM, Insectosaurus said:

I tried 吸烟于健康有害 which I'm pretty sure should stay the same in Mainland traditional.

As I said, no one expert recommend to using converter.

 

Give you two examples: 

「干」「乾」「乹 亁」「榦」

「里」「裡」「裏」

[Demonic_Duck]

1 hour ago, Insectosaurus said:

Color/colour, Dr./Dr, mesmerize/mesmerise, neighbor/neighbour, traveller/traveler.

 

That's a bit different though, that's UK vs US standards. The mainland Chinese version of 繁体字 is sorta like if Merriam Webster produced a "dictionary of traditional English spellings", written by USians, that was 99% the same as the Oxford dictionary but with a few discrepancies.

 

I mean fair enough for mainland to have a standard, I can imagine it's useful for transcription of ancient Chinese texts and so on, but wouldn't be used much outside of that type of thing.

[Insectosaurus]

For some reason this turned into a debate about the relevancy of such characters, which kind of baffles me, since I specifically wrote:

 

On 8/25/2021 at 3:49 PM, Insectosaurus said:

more out of personal interest than there being much practical use for it

 

I was really only looking to know if anyone knew of such a converter, and such a converter does not seem to exist. No need for a debate or further discussion.

[Insectosaurus]

On 9/1/2021 at 2:12 PM, shawky.nasr said:

Give you two examples: 

「干」「乾」「乹 亁」「榦」

「里」「裡」「裏」

 

乹, 榦 and 亁 are listed as 异体字, not 繁体字, so they would be out of the equation, same goes for 裡.

[Insectosaurus]

On 9/1/2021 at 2:36 PM, Demonic_Duck said:

is sorta like if Merriam Webster produced a "dictionary of traditional English spellings"

 

The biggest Mainland dictionaries provide this information already today, and I use them on a daily basis.

 

I probably should have merged my replies into one, sorry about that. ?

[shawky.nasr]

If you want traditional Chinese, you could using Taiwan and Hongkong Dictionaries.

When expert want make Traditional version of dictionary, they can’t use converter.

Best way, Keep traditional version as source.

 

for example: 两岸词典/中华语文大辞典 has two websites

简体版

 

繁体版

[Insectosaurus]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:31 AM, shawky.nasr said:

两岸词典/中华语文大辞典 has two websites

 

I only learn morphemes so most dictionaries, including this one, isn't much use for me. It also does not offer the standard I'm interested in.

 

On 9/2/2021 at 9:31 AM, shawky.nasr said:

When expert want make Traditional version of dictionary, they can’t use converter.

 

Not an epert. Not making a dictionary. ? Once again, I'm already fact checking everything so I find this point irrelevant. I said all this in my opening post.

 

I don't want to come off as rude (you've been an immense help to me when it comes to dictionaries) but I know there are other traditional dictionaries (I have several activated in Pleco).

 

Not everything in life I do out of practicality, but out of personal interest. My one and only goal was speeding up my current process (which isn't slow, it could just be much faster). Only two things would do that. 1) A converter that includes mainland traditional (especially *unambigious* ones, like 説) or 2) a Xinhua Zidian available in mainland traditional to be used on my Mac, which I don't think exists.

 

This is what typical morpheme flashcards look like (in simplified):