Adding pinyin to hanzi

[Crivens200]

Does anyone know how to add pinyin to large blocks of hanzi?

I know I can do it in MSWord, but Word only allows me to convert 10-15 characters at a time. I want to highlight a whole page and then add the pinyin and tone above the hanzi.

Anyone know if this can be done quickly en-masse or can I only do it a bit at a time?

Most grateful for any help (but please include a step by step guide and not just a "you can do it in njstar" type answer).

Cheers

[trevelyan]

Depends what you want to do with the annotated material. Read it online? Print documents for private study?

The issue is that Windows doesn't offer an easy way to suspend text over other text. There are several programs that do hanzi-to-pinyin conversion but do not leave the Chinese characters. If you want a desktop application try visiting http://www.chinesecomputing.com for a program called Dimsum.

http://www.adsotrans.com/new.html handles pinyin and tone over character display, but you may have trouble printing the output. You would want the "pintone" option.

[stephanhodges]

I've done this easily with Dimsum for web page source. After doing the page in the browser, just copy the entire page and paste into a Word document. The entire page (in Word), will have the pinyin above the Hanzi.

Then, if you're feeling daring, you can do a "reveal codes", and then search replace all to adjust the size of the pinyin to make it larger, etc. Finish up with a "hide codes" and you have it.

[Crivens200]

Explanation (hope it makes sense):

What I want to do is to have someone type my text books in han zi on to a word document. I would like then to convert this document from pure han zi to han zi with the pin yin above it so that I have 2 documents, one being the lesson purely in hanzi and the other document being the one with the hanzi with the pinyin above it.

May sound strange to some people, I know, but I am now past the study stage where my text books have pinyin, so for example I know that

"在人民遇到危险的时候" spelled in pinyin is "zai ren min yu dao wei xian de shi hou"

but sometimes I forget what the tones are and that it should read:

"zai4 ren2 min2 yu4 dao4 wei1 xian3 de shi2 hou4"

I know I can do it in Word by using "Format, Asian Layout, Phonetic Guide" but this doesn't allow me to convert the hanzi enmasse - only one line at a time.

I've tried using dimsum but that adds the pinyin to the side of the word and becomes a bit awkward to read as the hanzi appear hidden amongst the pinyin. Is there a way to do it in dimsum so that the pinyin appears above the character?

I'm surprised most learners don't ask about this once they get past the beginners level, or perhaps most foreigners are happily to have their chinese sound like "zai4 ren4 min4 yu4 dao4 wei4 xian4 de4 shi4 hou4"?

If anyone can help me solve this problem I will happily reward them with a big slap up meal, a night on the beers and finished off with a visit to your local hairdresser of choice.

[stephanhodges]

The trick with Dimsum is to have it translate HTML pages, through it's web browser, not by pasting onto the character page. There's a configuration option to put them above in that case.

That said, have you tried writing a macro to automate the Word operation? That should be fairly easy to do. If you want to send me a couple pages of Word Hanzi, I could also try it out for you.

Stephan

[bogleg]

Have you tried this program here? http://zdt.sourceforge.net

You can type (or paste) in hanzi and it will output the pinyin below it. Check out this screenshot to see if it fits your need.

http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=133341&ssid=23525

Chris

[Lugubert]

I have tried to record a Word macro, but strange things happen when I run the result on another selection of text.

[stephanhodges]

The www.mandarintools.com web site already has a Word macro.

[Lugubert]

That link doesn't work for me.

[stephanhodges]

I've PM'd you with my email address. I will send you a copy of the Word macro.

Erik reads these forums from time to time. Maybe he can say why the site wasn't available to you.

[ale100]

I have the same problem as Crivens200: automatic conversion of a text document containing only hanzi to a document containing hanzi with pinyin (with tone marks) above it. This annotated material is intended for printing.

I use both MSWord and Openoffice. I've tried to find a solution in WindowsXP and in Linux. However, till now my efforts resulted in nothing!

I remember I saw books with Chinese characters and pinyin above them. They were used to teach the Chinese language to foreign people. How could the publisher do it?

[gougou]

HanConv can't give you tone marks (well, it can, just not in one step), but numbers, if that's good enough.

[Cropgirl]

Hey everyone -

I'm new to this and am grateful for all the online help! My mom teaches Chinese in California and is always saying how much work it is and I'm convinced it's because she's not technology-savvy enough. So, in my efforts to help her:

I just downloaded DimSum. Not exactly sure how to translate a webpage w/ the pinyin appearing above it. Can someone expound? Does this happen in the Dimsum window or on a browser page?

Think I want to try out HanCov so that I can get the pinyin to show up above the trad/simp words in MS Word. So does HanConv have a virus or not?!!!

Thank you!

[gougou]

I never had one here, as did the other users commenting here.

[lau]

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~chinese/annotate.html

seems to work only with IE5, though, but you can get a cute, small pinyin with 1,2,3,4 tonemarks above. WARNING: has problems with 的 - it always claims it has to be pronounced as di4 (目的)， other de's have problems too, and 会 gets written as kuai4 (why? can anyone explain in which case do you pronounce it like that?), and for 大 - dai4. long texts is not a problem. printing out is not a problem. pinyin is just gorgeously-sized.

and you might consider using OCR and a scanner, rather than cheap labour, for making your book digital.

[Cropgirl]

Thanks Lau. Only with IE5, huh?

會 is pronounced "kuai4" when referring to accounting: 會計

会计师 - accountant

会计制度 - accounting system

But you're right that's silly because hui4 is WAY more common and has more phrases.

[gougou]

会 gets written as kuai4 (why? can anyone explain in which case do you pronounce it like that?)

It means something like to compute, as in 会计 - accounting.

[atitarev]

Try Wakan (http://wakan.manga.cz/)

Comlete install

http://wakan.manga.cz/files/wakan_full_167.exe

It can produce Chinese text with pinyin on top and translation on the bottom for a big chunk of text (use auto-fill translation). Works for both Chinese and Japanese (you can switch using the buttons representing a Chinese or a Japanese flag). You may want to tweak it to remove translations/defintions but leave pronunciation.

It's a completely free tool.

You can't copy the text from the app into another program with the pinyin guide but you can print directly from Wakan.

[chinesetools]

Cropgirl:

To get a web page with pinyin appearing above each character:

1. Start DimSum

2. Click on the "Settings" button (next to the "Go" button)

3. This should bring up your browser with a page that includes a section called "Annotation Options". If it doesn't, open Internet Explorer and go to the address http://localhost:4445/

4. For Annotation Type select "Add Pinyin (above character)" and click on "Save Settings"

5. In DimSum you should now be able to type in the address of the web page (in the "Web address" field) and it will bring up your browser with the webpage and pinyin above each character. If this doesn't happen, go to Internet Explorer and type http://localhost:4445/ followed by the address of the web page you're interested in. For example, for Google in China:

http://localhost:4445/www.google.cn

Comments and questions welcome on the DimSum discussion board at http://www.chinesecomputing.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=1

[ale100]

Following the suggestions from the community (thanks everybody for online help ), I used these applications to get our target (see headline). Here you are my results.

I'm working with WindowsXP (but I'd really like to find an application for Linux!).

DimSum

• By typing directly into the box, you can get an automatic annotation (with tone marks), but pinyin is on the side of each character, not above it.
  
• Conversion of a web page results in a correctly annotated output, that can be easily put in a word processor, but pinyin is besides hanzi (I use Firefox).
  

HanConv

• I followed these steps:
  

1. Write or paste Chinese tecxt.
   
   
2. Convert > Romanize > to Pinyin (Mandarin) [“Output tone numbers” and “Keep original text in output” are to be checked]
   
   
3. Copy and paste the output into the left box.
   
   
4. Convert > Romanize > from Pinyin Tone Numbers to Pinyin Tone Marks.
   
   
5. Copy and paste the final output to your preferred word processor.
   
   

• It's really a good tool, but: Chinese characters are not aligned with the pinyin phonetic guide and pinyin is below characters, not above them.
  

Wakan

• A good tool mainly for the characters section.
  
• It seems it has been working in Chinese mode only the first time I installed it. Then, I wrote pinyin and no hanzi appeared. I have uninstalled and installed it again, but nothing has changed.
  
• I also pasted hanzi's and tried to get pinyin phonetic guide – nothing to do. Maybe, some settings are wrong or a bug is present, being the editor under development.