背景介绍：
中文打字比赛虽非热门赛事，但2013年黄振宇以惊人速度夺冠，成为焦点。这不仅是技术挑战的高光，也反映了中文在 QWERTY 键盘上的独特输入旅程。从19世纪末的打字困境到现代智能输入法的兴起，中国人历经艰辛，克服无字母表难题，创造出多种汉字输入系统。这一过程不仅是技术创新的体现，更是中西文化与技术交融的生动写照，展现了中国智慧如何在全球数字时代中独辟蹊径。
How Chinese computing nerds cracked a linguistic conundrum
中国电脑迷是如何破解语言难题的
Specifically, how to write Chinese characters using a Western keyboard
具体来说，就是如何使用西文键盘书写汉字
The national Chinese Characters Typing Competition is rarely cause for excitement, but in 2013 it was. Huang Zhenyu, a student, produced 222 characters per minute, or 3.7 per second, the equivalent of someone typing more than 200 words per minute in English. (The average typist manages about 40 English words per minute.)
中文打字比赛，这一传统赛事往往难以激起外界的广泛热情，但2013年的那一幕却是个不折不扣的例外。彼时，尚为学生的黄振宇（音译）以每分钟222个汉字的惊人速度，即每秒3.7字的频率，震撼了全场，这一速度相当于英文打字员每分钟敲击出200余个单词的壮举（要知道，普通英文打字员的平均速度仅为每分钟40词）。
Mr Huang’s performance was a dramatic moment in one of the Chinese-speaking world’s long-running challenges: how to use the 26 letters on the Western QWERTY keyboard to type thousands of Chinese characters.
这场赛事不仅是华语世界长久以来技术挑战的一个缩影，更是黄振宇个人成就的高光时刻，它深刻揭示了如何在西方标准的 QWERTY 键盘上，以26个英文字母为媒介，编织出成千上万个汉字的奇妙旅程。
The Chinese language’s lack of an alphabet has been a source of concern. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it meant Chinese typewriting and telegraphy were much slower. The alphabet anxiety intensified when the personal-computing revolution in the West began to transform the world.
长久以来，中文无字母表的特性曾是技术发展的桎梏。19至20世纪之交，这一特性显著拖慢了汉字打字与电报传输的速度。随着西方个人计算机革命的浪潮席卷全球，这一“字母焦虑”愈发显得迫切而严峻。
Thomas Mullaney, a professor at Stanford University, has written an informative and enjoyable history of how China addressed this crucial technical question. He observes that Chinese people, when typing on a Western-designed computer or phone, are required to operate entirely in code in order to turn keyboard letters into characters.
斯坦福大学杰出教授托马斯·马拉尼博士，以其深厚的学术功底与流畅的文笔，在其著作中详尽而生动地描绘了中国人如何克服这一关键技术难题的壮丽史诗。他指出，面对西方设计的计算机与手机，中国人不得不依靠复杂的编码系统，将键盘上的字母转化为生动的汉字。
As late as 1989, one of America’s most eminent linguists wrote that, compared with Western languages, “There is not, and I believe never can be, as efficient a system for inputting and outputting Chinese characters.” In alphanumeric languages, what you type is what you get. In Chinese, it never is.
1989年，一位美国知名语言学家的断言更添几分悲壮色彩：“相较于西方语言，高效的汉字输入与输出系统目前不存在，且我坚信其永远不可能实现。”在字母语言中，输入即所见；而在中文的世界里，这一规则却从未直接适用。
“The Chinese Computer” zeroes in on some forgotten but memorable characters. Kao Chung-Chin worked with IBM in the 1940s to develop the electric Chinese typewriter using a different four-number code for every character.
《中文打字机》一书，如同一部穿越时空的纪录片，聚焦了那些虽已淡出公众视野却仍熠熠生辉的先驱人物。比如，20世纪40年代，高仲芹与国际商业机器公司（IBM）携手，开创了电动中文打字机的先河，每个汉字都被赋予独特的四位数字键码。
Samuel Caldwell, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke no Chinese but developed a system whereby each key on the QWERTY keyboard represented a brush stroke in a character; typing the first few strokes linked to a photographic storage matrix. (Caldwell, therefore, unwittingly invented the “autocomplete” function in the 1950s, decades before it would become a time-saving smartphone feature.)
再如麻省理工学院的塞缪尔·考德威尔教授，虽不通中文，却凭借非凡的智慧，设计出了一套基于汉字笔划的输入系统，让 QWERTY 键盘的每个键位都承载着汉字构造的奥秘。这一创举，竟在不经意间预见了数十年后智能手机上风靡的“自动补全”功能。
In the 1970s China contemplated abandoning QWERTY altogether and produced huge keyboards of characters. But from the 1980s onwards, new “structure-based” input systems flourished, such as wubi (the system used by Mr Huang).
进入20世纪70年代，中国曾一度考虑彻底摒弃QWERTY键盘，转而研发巨型汉字键盘。然而，自80年代起，“基于字形特征”的新型输入系统如雨后春笋般涌现，其中最为人所熟知的莫过于五笔输入法（黄振宇正是此中高手）。
In those methods, each QWERTY key correlates with a different visual component of a character so, typed consecutively, they form a full character. The lure of the Chinese market meant Western computer companies were eager for a solution.
这些系统巧妙地将 QWERTY 键盘的每一个按键与汉字的构成元素相关联，通过连续敲击，即可拼凑出完整的汉字。面对庞大的中国市场，西方计算机公司纷纷投入巨资，力求在这一领域取得突破。
And, for all its tricksiness, the QWERTY keyboard has prevailed. Of the different codes it is pinyin, which writes characters phonetically using the Roman alphabet, that has won the day. Type in a Chinese sound using Latin letters—tong, for instance—and a menu appears of the most commonly used characters with that sound.
尽管 QWERTY 键盘在中文输入中显得颇为复杂，但它最终凭借其灵活性与适应性脱颖而出。在众多编码方案中，拼音输入法以其简洁高效的特点赢得了广泛认可。用户只需输入汉字的拼音（如“tong”），系统便会迅速呈现一系列发音相同的常用汉字供选择。
Whoever thought that a book about “hypographic semiotics” could be so absorbing? Geeks will enjoy the computing conundrums and Sinophiles will love the history; laymen, too, will learn plenty.
谁能料想，一本探讨“虚拟符号学”的专著竟能如此扣人心弦？它不仅吸引了计算机爱好者的目光，让他们沉醉于那些技术难题的破解之道；也让热爱中国文化的人们得以一窥这段鲜为人知的历史；即便是门外汉，也能从中汲取丰富的知识养分。
Mr Mullaney points out that half the world’s population uses scripts that require workarounds with a QWERTY keyboard. This is a global issue of which few Westerners are aware. China has, he writes, “saved the Western-designed computer...from its foundational limitations”.
马拉尼教授深刻指出，全球近半数人口在输入文本时，都不得不绕开直接表达的障碍，借助 QWERTY 键盘这一西方设计的工具。这不仅是一个鲜为西方人所知的全球性议题，更是中国智慧如何“将西方设计的计算机……从其基本局限中拯救出来”的生动例证。
