Chinese Character Encoding beyond Borders: A Story of Challenges and Solutions

About the Talk

Ever wondered how Chinese characters can be seamlessly typed, searched, and read on computers? Curious about the story of how Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) characters integrated into our digital world? Join us as we explore the evolution of CJK encoding and the challenges it has overcome!

Over the past 30 years, Unicode has revolutionized information exchange & storage across languages, bridging gaps between different systems and enabling seamless communication beyond borders. Thanks to this universal character encoding standard, global digital communication today is more inclusive and accessible.

However, the situation is far from simple. Encoding the vast number of Han characters (漢字) used in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other languages has always been a major challenge. Unlike alphabets with fixed character sets, the collection of Han characters is constantly expanding. This requires careful consideration to accommodate new characters within existing technology. These characters also have variant forms due to their long history and evolution. Information systems face a dilemma between maintaining consistency in variant forms and preserving historical works. Striking the right balance is crucial for academic research and digital preservation.

In this talk, Prof. Qin LU will introduce the history of making CJK encoding work across borders, languages, and systems. She will discuss the technical challenges faced and share the development of ingenious solutions that address them. Come and join us to uncover the magic behind language and technology.

Registration: https://lbcube.hkust.edu.hk/ce/index.php/event/9921/

About the Speaker

Dr. LU Qin is a leading expert in open systems and CJK encoding methods. She initiated the I-Hanzix open system architecture to support multiple locales and also engineered the code set announcement scheme making it possible to display web pages written in different languages in their native forms across the web. She spearheaded the development of Hong Kong’s first standard of Chinese character set, Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, used in all systems in Hong Kong and played a leading role in pushing Hong Kong to migrate to ISO10646/Unicode platform.

She continues to be very active in CJK standardization work. Since 2004 she has served as the convenor of the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2/IRG group for the encoding of CJK unified ideographs in the ISO 10646/Unicode standards and is a contributing editor to the Unicode standard.

In 2012, she received a Medal of Honour from the Hong Kong government and in 2015 she was awarded the Bulldog Award from Unicode for her contributions as an expert in CJK encoding. Until her retirement, Prof. Lu was a professor at Department of Computing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Prof. LU received her B.S. in electrical engineering from Beijing Normal University and her M.Sci. and Ph.D. in computer science from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Notes:

• This is a HMAW1905-recognized event in the "Personal Enrichment & Community Service" category under the "Self-directed Experience" of HMAW1905: Behavioral Foundations of University Education: Habits, Mindsets, and Wellness.
• To receive 1.5 hour, you must attend the event in full and miss no more than 10mins.
• The talk will be recorded and photos will be taken during the talk. By attending or participating in this event, you are giving your consent to be photographed and video recorded and you are waiving any and all claims regarding the use of your image by the University.