Essays on Writing and Language in Honor - Sino-Platonic Papers

Sirw-Plutonic Papers, 27 (August 3 1, 199 1)
defined words (terms). It is no exaggeration to say that, without
such terms there will be no modernized language information
system, and therefore no information society at all. As everyone
knows, the prerequisite for language computing is precision,
formalization and algorithmization
2.2 Terminological Normalization and Standardization -- the Crux
of the Information Society
Natural language is an extremely complicated sign system. It
is really an arduous task to computerize it. Beyond any doubt, a
great burden, even an unconquerable difficulty, would be imposed
on the modernized language system if the basic elements of the
natural language concerned have many variants (at least the
storage would be increased, or some other contradictions take
place in the system itself). Let us take a recent example, the
book of a famous American industrialist, Autobiography of Iaccoca
has been translated into Chinese by four publishing houses in
1986. Four Chinese equivalents have been produced from Iaccoca,
i.e. (Yakeka), (Aikeka), L $Gfi (Aikeka),&fi+-f
(Yakek$."Ind this cannot even be compared with the name
Mendeleev which had 28 Chinese equivalents. The same holds true
.for technical terms. The little word has many equivalents
. too,such as rbe, $* SJ#$-~&, s."$4&& , j& . The network of
information systems eman s a high egree of standardization --
this is the crux for ensuring a free flow of information.
2.3 Terminological Work Should be Modernized
To meet the requirements of the information society
terminological work itself should be modernized in the first
place. The handicraf t-type terminological work and
lexicographical work cannot be continued any more. A pressing
matter of the moment is to set up a terminological database and
relevant termnet and work out electronic dictionaries as well.
3. CHINESE INFORMATION PROCESSING AND CHINESE TERMINOLOGY
Chinese information processing is the flight of steps
leading up to the information society in China, and Chinese
terminology is the key to the information society.
3.1 Difficulties in Chinese Information Processing
3.1.1 Input: The written representation of Chinese language is
Chinese characters. The defects of Chinese characters lie in the
huge amount (about 60 thousands), the complex configuration
(which consist of between one to forty or fifty strokes) and the
abundance of homonyms and polyphones which are not so easy to
process as alphabetical writing. In order to input Chinese