A New Best Chinese IME?
April 5th, 2007 by MarkFor the first time in years, I’m absolutely floored by a new Chinese IME. Google just came out of nowhere, slapped their Google Pinyin up for download and humbled the competition. Like other IMEs, Google Pinyin uses a word’s context to figure out which character to input. It’s just a lot better at it. I really can’t get over how intelligent this IME is. It handles mis-ordered n’s and g’s or z’s and h’s, and it’s even pretty good about knowing when just output English.
Just as Microsoft has, Google has put far more work into input for mainland users than for those using traditional characters in Taiwan. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Google Pinyin can be set to output traditional characters. Even though I’m much more used to using zhuyin input, I find Google Pinyin to be faster than Microsoft’s traditional Chinese IME, especially if I’m typing full paragraphs of text. It really saves a lot of time not having to switch out of the IME every time I want to type a punctuation mark.
Setting Google Pinyin to output traditional Chinese
Just click on the pair of cogs at the right hand side of the Google Pinyin toolbar, then select 属性没值, click the 词典 tab, click the 繁体模式 checkbox and then accept. You’ll then be typing in traditional characters!
Update: Holly, Fili, Mark S., and Brendan have all written about Google Pinyin, too.
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April 6th, 2007 at 6:32 am
I installed it as well; I havn’t done as thorough a test of it as you have, but up to this point I find it little different from the Microsoft IME.
Speaking of Zhuyin, is there a downloadable IME for that, and how do you learn which keys represent which symbols?
April 6th, 2007 at 7:19 am
The answer to your question is a bit off-topic, but it may be useful to others, so I’ll post it here.
The default IME for traditional Chinese input on Windows is zhuyin. Assuming you have traditional Chinese Windows, or even traditional Chinese support installed on your computer, you should have it. 微軟新注音輸入法2002a is the name of the one I’ve been using. I know what keys correspond to what symbols because the symbols are written right on the keyboard!
If you bought your computer outside Taiwan, you can still pull up a keyboard map via the IME. Basically 1 is ㄅ, Q is ㄆ, A is ㄇ, Z is ㄈ, and then ㄉ column starts at 2, etc… Just follow the ㄅㄆㄇㄈ alphabet across the keyboard. The 3rd tone is on the 3 key, the 4th tone on the 4 key, the 2nd tone on the 6 key and the neutral tone is on the 7 key. As per zhuyin rules, words without a tone mark are first tone.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
The annoying thing about using this IME is having to type the number of your choice each time you want to input a character or set of characters. With the Windows system I just hit enter, which is much faster for me. Is there any way to reconfigure it to do this?
April 6th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Which Windows IME are you used to? With the Microsoft one I usually use (微軟新注音輸入法2002a), you have to hit a number after every single character, in order to select the tone. I’m not sure about how to reconfigure the Google one, but assuming you want to pick the default conversion, just hit the space bar instead of the 1 key.
My biggest complaint with Google Pinyin so far is the lack of “Taiwan words”. 嘉義, for example, has to be chosen character by character, since it’s not in the dictionary. Also, the 麼 of 什麼 had to be selected individually when I first started using Google Pinyin. Only 什么 was listed as a word selection choice. Now, it seems to be recognizing 什麼 as a word, though.
April 6th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I didn’t know there were multiple Chinese IMEs for Windows. Mine is just the one in the ordinary language bar that I set up after downloading the language pack from the Microsoft site. You have to hit space for character options, but it chooses well over half the time. I find that using it I type Chinese as fast or even faster than most people using Zhuyinfuhao.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
This is odd. Are you saying that when you downloaded the Windows language pack, the default IME for traditional Chinese didn’t use zhuyin?
April 6th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Yeah, but I switched it to Hanyu Pinyin in the settings and now it works pretty well.
April 6th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Interesting. I’ve found the 微軟新注音輸入法2002a dictionary and parsing to be a bit lacking. I only used it because I’m used to zhuyin input. You using that IME with pinyin input is basically just getting an inferior IME to the Chinese (simplified) MS Pinyin IME 3.0, which is, in turn, less sophisticated than Google Pinyin appears to be.
Obviously, I can see why you’ve been using 微軟新注音輸入法2002a even though you like pinyin input, though. A simplified IME isn’t that useful for us here in Taiwan.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Mark, what I’ve been noticing is that if you enter a full compound but the wrong characters show up first, selecting them one at a time will then set the correct characters as the default. So, for the 什么 problem, if you type “shenme” in full, but then choose the characters 什 and 麼 one at a time, the next time you type “shenme,” 什麼 will pop up first. Same went for my Chinese name - 荷 and 麗 don’t normally go together, but since I typed “heli” and chose each character from the list, 荷麗 now comes up as a compound. The 什麼 thing was annoying me, too, until I realized how smart this thing is. Good thing, since I also didn’t want to have to go searching for 髮 each time I wanted to type 頭髮 - the default is set to 頭發！
PS: Thanks for the note on the space bar!
April 7th, 2007 at 2:43 am
How about a link to download it. You can’t just build it up like that and expect me to find it on my own!
April 7th, 2007 at 2:44 am
http://tools.google.com/pinyin
April 10th, 2007 at 3:40 am
[...] Chinese character to input. It’s supposed to be great at predicting what you will input next. Mark, Holly, Fili, Mark S. and Brendan have blogged about it. These icons link to social bookmarking [...]
April 13th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Thanks for the tip, I downloaded it and have been trying it out. Actually, I don’t write Chinese much, but have decided to practice more. I have the Microsoft 注音 IME installed, but I am so slow using and learning 注音.
But now I have a big problem. The Google pinyin IME seems to be always running, so everytime I want to log onto my web-based e-mail, etc. I have to find the icon and click on the 中 to swith back to letters. I have to do this for each new window I open, and it’s driving me crazy.
Can you advise me on what settings I need to change so that it will not start automatically, but can easily be turned on when I need to write in Chinese??
April 14th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Go to the language and regional settings in the control panel and set English to be your default input method. Then, when you want to switch to Chinese, you can hit ctrl-shift to cycle through your language options. If the Google pinyin IME is already active, you can just tap the left shift key to switch the Chinese input on and off. That’s faster than clicking the 中.
April 16th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
[...] I was just reading on another blog about a new IME (input method editor) from Google, that is supposed to be much better at entering Chinese than the built in one from Microsoft. Blog here: http://toshuo.com/2007/a-new-best-chinese-ime/ [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 2:31 am
For those English-speaking students of Chinese who are interested in using this tool, I have put together the following translation of the main setup options. Hope I wasn’t too far off on anything.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I have a couple of critics to make to this new IME, firt of all, it’s doesn’t have english, second, it’s fucking simplified chinese (i would say it looks ugly and weird for me, i’ve been studying tradicional chinese and i will keep doing so)…
That’s all, after a couple of tests i could work it well with my portuguese writing on US keyboard all right.
Hope google makes it if not in english, atleast in tradicional (real) chinese…
April 30th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Luis, it looks like you missed reading part of the post. See the bottom paragraph titled, “Setting Google Pinyin to output traditional Chinese”.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
I read it and i did it, what i’m still bitching about is that all the software is still in Simplified chinese…
it’s a really nice tool!!! But unfortunately it has no english or traditional chinese interface!!!!
September 6th, 2007 at 4:13 am
One thing I discovered with the Google IME is that when writing with traditional characters like they do in Taiwan, some characters that the Taiwanese use are actually simplified characters. Thus, it becomes impossible to write certain characters with this IME.
For example, the word 台灣 (which means Taiwan) is commonly used in Taiwan. But this cannot be written with the Google IME, because it consists of a simplified character (台) and a traditional character (灣). Instead you have to write 臺灣, which the Taiwanese hardly ever use. This is the same with many other words involving the character 台.
With the Microsoft IME, this was never a problem.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:26 am
I think the Sohu pinyin IME is better, which is the one that Google copied
http://www.sogou.com/pinyin/
February 10th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Seems to me anyone having trouble with the Microsoft IME doesn’t have it set up right… I’ve used it for a long while and love it, and a week using the Google knock off of Sogou hasn’t changed my mind!