Subject: Re: Proofreading Chinese: a pattern comparison software question

From: [email-masked] (Carlos McEvilly)
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 93 11:56:49 PDT

This does not directly answer your question about pattern comparison
software, but may still be of interest.  In Taipei I saw a demonstration
of software that reads a Big5-coded text file on a computer, and scans
for incorrect phrases.  For example (if memory serves) the 'xu' in
'xuyao' (xu1yao4; need) is written with either one of two characters;
I have been told that one of these ways is incorrect, although both
phrases are in the dictionary.  Note that we are talking about
different characters 'xu', not different forms of the same character.

Writers often confuse characters in idioms they may have learned by
ear but have never seen on paper.  This can twist meaning in sometimes
ironic ways, and we are all familiar with examples in English such
as 'tow the line.'  I should be able to think up some examples in
Chinese quickly, but I'm drawing a blank and most of my books are
somewhere in the middle of the Pacific right now. 

This software keeps a list of incorrect phrases, and when they
are encountered, flags them so a human can decide whether a change
is necessary.  Of course this doesn't catch all errors, but it
helps greatly with a significant class of errors.

Unfortunately I don't have the name of the company in Taipei that
was selling this.  And of course it might be of dubious value when
applied to classical texts, unless it was highly customized for
the appropriate vocabulary--difficult since it is much easier to
note and anticipate the common errors in modern usage than in
data entry of classical text.

It would be interesting to hear more about your ideas for OCR 
pattern comparison as a proofreading tool.

- Carlos McEvilly
  [email-masked]
. 

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