Research Tips

How to Capture Chinese Digital Characters

With thanks from Tom Loui …

The following may help you capture Chinese digital characters into your documents. I use an online Chinese dictionary to find Chinese characters and their definitions. If you have a neatly written Chinese character, with the strokes clearly written, you can use the following procedures to add the digital character to any document. If the Chinese character was written in Chinese script, you may need to find someone to rewrite the character clearly with each stroke.

1. Goto URL LINE Dictionary : English-Thai, Chinese-English, English-Chinese Dictionary

LINE Dictionary : English-Thai, Chinese-English, English-Chinese Dictionary
LINE Dictionary is providing free dictionary and free translator. English -Thai Dictionary, Chinese -English Dic…

2. Click on the pen in the search box. A window will appear that is interactive using your mouse. Place your mouse in the left box, hold down the left mouse button and start writing each stroke of the Chinese character. You need to let go of the mouse button at the end of each stroke. Then move the mouse to a location to start your next stroke. As you write each stroke, possible Chinese characters based on what you draw will appear in the right box. If you make a mistake with your stroke, you can click on Undo or Clear at the bottom of the window. When you see the Chinese character that closely matches your Chinese character, move the mouse over the character, the pinyin will appear above the character. If this is the Chinese character, left click the mouse button and the character will appear in the search box. However, this will also clear the interactive window.

3. Click on the X on the bottom right of the window to close it.

4. The Chinese character that you just selected will show the various meanings as well as how it is used with other Chinese characters and the resulting meanings of the combinations of characters. Now highlight the Chinese character in the search box by placing the mouse pointer next to the character, hold down the left mouse button and drag it across the character to highlight the character. Release the mouse button, move the mouse pointer over the character, click the right mouse button. A drop down menu will appear. Move the mouse pointer to copy, it should change color, click the left mouse button once.

5. Open a Word document that you want to add the Chinese character that you just copied. Place the mouse pointer at the location you want to add the Chinese character, right click the mouse button. A drop down menu will appear. Select paste and left click the mouse button once. The Chinese character should now appear on your document. You can copy and paste this character as many times as you want. You can also enlarge each character by first highlighting the character and then selecting the size font you want.

6. Repeat this procedure for all your Chinese characters

Note: Always verify with the person who provided you the hand written Chinese characters by showing them the document with the digitized characters in the text.

Hope this is what you are looking to learn how to capture Chinese digital characters.

2 thoughts on “Research Tips”

  1. Here are my recommendations for digitizing Chinese characters. I agree with Tom in that since I am a Chinese illiterate, I always check my digitized output with someone who can read and write.
    Pleco https://www.pleco.com/
    This is my goto app and is on a mobile device. If the handwriting is with good penmanship, or the character is in typeset, then I will use the camera to use optical character recognition to offer several choices. I will use the mobile device to image characters on a screen and obviate printing out the Chinese.
    Otherwise, I use my finger on the touch sensitive screen to do the individual stroke.
    MDGB https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=chardict
    This is my goto desktop application. I use a mouse rather than my finger for the pen strokes. The site then provides simplified, traditional variants, pinyin, jyupting and Yale romanizations.
    Convertio Optical Character Recognition Online & Free https://convertio.co/ocr/chinese/
    This is useful if you have a ‘wall of typeset Chinese words and don’t want to image each character. See my write up with examples on the Chinese Genealogy Forum. http://siyigenealogy.proboards.com/thread/2999/online-chinese-simplified-traditional-ocr
    IMHO

    Reply
  2. Use Google Docs to digitize Chinese characters in PDF or JPG files.

    Just follow the directions below to use the FREE OCR feature in Google Docs
    It is so easy that it appears not to work.
    Scroll down below your original document to see the transcribed characters.

    I have used the Google Doc method several times but wanted to make sure it works before posting.
    It does transcribe. Ma
    ke sure you scroll down to see the transcription below your original PDF, JPG.
    Sorry, my vertical Chinese became horizontal.
    I am happy with the results which I can copy and paste into other documents.

    Select language and output format.

    #Use Google Docs to Do Chinese OCR
    Login in Google Account and go to Google Drive.
    Upload Chinese PDF into Google Drive.
    Open Chinese file with Google Docs by right click on the file.
    Google Docs will perform OCR on the Chinese file automatically.Chinese OCR with Google docs.

    Reply

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