For those of you wondering how Chinese people can actually type all those weird-looking complex characters, this video will surely make you go WTF@*#$! With the help of a Yawei Steno Kit (亚伟中文速录机) which possesses only 14 keys, and which we're told appears at almost every press conference here, this lady by the name of Huang Xia hacks out 520 Chinese characters per minute. Apparently, the official record for stenotyping in American English today is 375 words per minute. As any China Twitterer will inform you, every 100 characters in Chinese can contain a ton more information than 100 characters in English. Hand this lady a 100,000 character novel and she will finishing typing it for you in 192.3 minutes.
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Very shallow analysis, Kenneth. I know you don't get paid, and your stuff is infinitely deeper than shitheads like Matt Drudge, but nonetheless...
The machine that she is using is a non-standard keyboard, obviously it has some iterative process for phrase selection. That is to say that the computer does a lot of the work.
Also, and if you were to make any appropriate comparison to courtroom stenography, the record for which (after a quick Google search) is 592 words per minute. http://is.gd/83GJ --- the date for that record, by the way, is December 5, 1912, so no computer assistance involved.
If I type using pinyin, then the MSN or google tool on my PC does some of the work in assuming the most likely character.
What's the difference?
It's impressive, whichever way you look at it.
No one says it's not impressive, but whether the machine assumes characters or phrases are two very different propositions.
BUT the real difference is comparing this machine to a standard keyboard. That is not a valid argument.
Reminds me of playing the piano.
Buck Rogerz: The earlier stenotype machines which you are referring to produce output not readable to non-stenographers, ie., someone had to go back and retype the whole damn thing into complete English. Sure, with today's smart machines and all, you have the computer do all the transcription for you automatically as you type but even with that, the official record for American English is 375wpm at today's technology as I've updated in the post.
All I get is a message that reads: "The clip has been blocked in you region"
What a shame...
Kenneth, were it not for sophisticated software, this 14-keyed machine would also be incomprehensible. Based on what I can see here, it seems to be guessing common words and phrases, and inserting a lot of text for the typist. Also, I suspect it has limitations in its ability to express Chinese fully.
I am curious how it works, so if you can get your hands on a manual, please publish it here. Thanks.