Ancient Chinese Characters Research Articles

Deep Neural Network Model-Assisted Reconstruction and Optimization of Chinese Characters in Product Packaging Graphic Patterns and Visual Styling Design

Chinese character fonts not only carry the long history of Chinese civilization, but also burst out modern design art elements with distinctive Chinese characteristics. This article first analyzes the origin and writing form of several ancient Chinese characters and draws out the influence of the historical evolution of ancient Chinese characters on Chinese culture. In the basic theoretical structure of font design, traditional art elements and modern font design are integrated, and specific design cases are analyzed. A Chinese character packaging quality detection method combining machine vision and a lightweight convolutional neural network is proposed. First, the method based on threshold segmentation and affine transformation in machine vision is used to perform threshold processing on the image to be tested, and the Chinese character region is tilted and cropped; then, the network structure of the classification algorithm is designed according to the requirements of image features and defect recognition. The field images are produced, a dataset of Chinese character packaging defects is established, and then the proposed Chinese character packaging defect recognition network is verified and deployed to test the accuracy and detection speed of the algorithm deployed on the Jetson Nano embedded platform. Combined with theoretical research and case analysis, the design of packaging design series is practiced with the idea of combining Chinese character art design and classical culture.

Image Translation for Oracle Bone Character Interpretation

The Oracle Bone Characters are the earliest known ancient Chinese characters and are an important record of the civilization of ancient China.The interpretation of the Oracle Bone Characters is challenging and requires professional knowledge from ancient Chinese language experts. Although some works have utilized deep learning to perform image detection and recognition using the Oracle Bone Characters, these methods have proven difficult to use for the interpretation of uninterpreted Oracle Bone Character images. Inspired by the prior knowledge that there exists a relation between glyphs from Oracle Bone Character images and images of modern Chinese characters, we proposed a method of image translation from Oracle Bone Characters to modern Chinese characters based on the use of a generative adversarial network to capture the implicit relationship between glyphs from Oracle Bone Characters and modern Chinese characters. The image translation process between Oracle Bone Characters and the modern Chinese characters forms a symmetrical structure, comprising an encoder and decoder. To our knowledge, our symmetrical image translation method is the first of its kind used for the task of interpreting Oracle Bone Characters. Our experiments indicated that our image translation method can provide glyph information to aid in the interpretation of Oracle Bone Characters.

Cereals and Harvests: Polyphony in the Old Chinese Writing (part 1)

Chinese characters usually consist of two or more elements, of which one bears phonetic and other – semantic values. Some complex characters (usually referred to as ‘ideograms’) consist of semantic elements only. However, there is a ‘crypto-phonogram theory’ suggested by Russian-American sinologist Peter A. Boodberg (1903–1972). According to this theory, all or almost all Chinese complex characters comprise a phonetic element. Still, some of these phonetic elements are hard to discover, since the Ancient Chinese characters could be “polyphonic” and be read in several ways. For example, two characters from the Shang period (13–11 cent. BC) – he 禾 ‘cereals’ and nian 年 ‘harvest’ is very close with regard to their shape, meaning, and usage. Some scholars even believe that the character 禾 may mean ‘harvest’ as well as ‘cereals’. The present article aims to examine Boodberg’s theory by using quantitative analysis. If the idea of the ‘harvest’ could be transcribed by two different characters, this phenomenon should not be dependent on the context. However, if two characters stand for two different words, albeit close in meaning, the usage ratio should depend on their context. It turned out that the divinators of the Shang dynasty could ‘beg’ for both harvest and cereals, which in its turn is reflected by similar or equal ratios. Nevertheless, when the requested harvest was received the ratio between these characters changes significantly. Moreover, when a harvest of a specific crop was mentioned, the Shang scribes used the character 禾 only once. The data received may hint at the fact that the phenomenon must be purely lexical. However, one cannot consider these data as definitive. The article shows that the ratio does not depend on the context alone. It also depends on the nature and education of the scribe who carved the inscription on the bone. The results suggest an additional study to evaluate the full significance of this factor.

Positive referential meaning and color metaphor bring beauty: Evidence on aesthetic appraisal of ancient Chinese character from Han, Bai, and Yi ethnic groups

Positive referential meaning and color metaphor bring beauty: Evidence on aesthetic appraisal of ancient Chinese character from Han, Bai, and Yi ethnic groups

Research on the origin of clothing from the perspective of the ancient Chinese character etymology and philosophy

The origin of clothing has always been one of the most important topics in the field of apparel culture research. However, academics have different opinions on this issue. Based on the dilemma analysis of the three research routes which include philology, archaeology, anthropology, we can study the essence of the origin of clothing by analysing ancient Chinese character and philosophy. The relative methods of characters etymology in ancient China, archaeology, anthropology and philosophy are adopted in this study in order to further study the origin of clothing. The research shows that: from etymology research on characters in ancient China, Chinese characters associated with clothing can reflect the objective needs of clothing-the carrying tools whose material are cortex. From the perspective of philosophical researches, clothing prototype originated in the cortical belt for carrying in the process of human evolution during the Palaeolithic. It is an important tool for primitive humans to increase their survival rate. And formed clothing is necessary for them to get out of the Africa and expand their living space. First of all, this paper systematically demonstrates the idea that clothing originated from tools based on the analysis of ancient Chinese characters. Secondly, from the perspective of philosophy, this paper demonstrates the great historical role of clothing as a survival tool, based on the viewpoint that the generation of clothing precedes the consciousness of clothing.

Research on extraction of fragile bamboo slips by underwater temporary solidification in original state

The complex preservation conditions make underwater cultural relics, especially organic ones—more fragile than terrestrial relics. Bamboo slips, the main carriers of ancient Chinese characters, are often found underwater. They have high cultural and historical values, but their mechanical strength is low, making them difficult to extract. Moreover, if their arrangement is disrupted during the extraction process, the subsequent restoration will be harder. In this study, veratraldehyde, a new underwater temporary solid material, was used to conduct in-situ reinforcement and extraction experiments on organic cultural relics. Based on these experiments, the researchers designed a three-layer wrapped protective frame and proposed the recovery method of dissolution and effective residue detection of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The experimental results showed that this method can nearly preserve the original state of fragile bamboo slips underwater and extract them out of the water safely. Also, the solidification process is reversible and without residues. It is a safe and reliable underwater technology for solidifying extraction of cultural relics.

Ancient Chinese Character Image Retrieval Based on Dual Hesitant Fuzzy Sets

The complex and changeable structures of ancient Chinese characters result in the decreasing accuracy of their image retrieval. To resolve this problem, a new retrieval method based on dual hesitant fuzzy sets is proposed. Dual hesitation fuzzy sets that can express uncertain information more comprehensively are employed in the feature extraction process of directional line elements. The multiattribute evaluation index of adjacent grids for the current grid and its corresponding membership and nonmembership functions are established, and the weight of each attribute is calculated by the dual hesitation fuzzy entropy, such that the proposed features can fully reflect the topological structure of ancient Chinese characters. Using the dual hesitation fuzzy correlation coefficient to measure the similarity between the ancient Chinese character images to be retrieved and the candidate images, the retrieval of ancient Chinese character images is realized. Experiments show that when the t0hreshold value of the correlation coefficient is 0.9, the average retrieval accuracy is 90.4%.

"Pinyin Tzimu Project" — a Landmark Event in the History of Chinese Civilization Initiated and Supported by the CPC

The Creation of the Alphabet and words spelling of Chinese Mandarin (Pinyin tsimu project) is a landmark event in the history of Chinese civilization. It breathes new life into ancient Chinese characters. Great "dumb" − the Chinese character − for the first time since 1958 has become known to the whole world by sounds of Beijing speech. Today the two types of writing − Chinese Mandarin traditional ideographic and innovative phonographic writing, in their unity, provide the linguocultural unity of the Chinese society and the progress of science and technology of China. Millions of people in China and beyond are studying the Chinese language based on the sound letter standard of the words of Chinese Putonghua. Letter orthogramms of Chinese words provide tele- and Internet communication of hundreds of millions of Chinese. In the 20 century the first Latinized alphabet for the Chinese language was created with the leading participation of one of the founders and leaders of the CPC, Qu Qiubo, (included in the official list of "100 Greatest Figures of New China") under the influence of the experience of creating alphabets for the peoples of the USSR in 1921-26. Chinese alphabet, based on Latin letters and letter-spelling forms of Putonghua words are a huge scientific achievement of Chinese linguists. Outstanding contribution to the creation of the alphabet and letter words of Chinese Mandarin was made by a brilliant Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang (1906-2011), called the «father of pinyin zimu» or Chinese alphabet in China. The top leaders of the Communist Party of China, Mao Tsedong, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi led the creation of the "pinyin" alphabet. The political will and wisdom of the CPC's senior leadership, combined with the creative genius of Chinese linguists, ensured the creation of a letter writing for the people of China, which was "an epochal event in the history of the development of Chinese civilization".

人类文字的单一起源与演变脉络图谱 (The Single Origin and Knowledge Map of Human Writing Characters)

Chinese abstract: 摘要：人类各民族的文字看起来各不相同，语言发音更是千差万别。但实际上它们之间有盘根错节的关系。以前的研究对字母文字之间的传承关系已基本达成共识，建立起了字母文字单一起源理论，并提出了字母与古埃及圣书体象形符号存在演变关系的假设。但是对象形文字系统，特别是古埃及文字与古汉语之间的关系仍研究非常少。本文对当代文字比较研究成果进行了系统的综述，结合《发现夏朝》、《文明起源》两书的原创性研究成果，绘制了一副人类文字传播与影响的脉络图谱，完成东西方语言文字的中西合璧与总体拼图。 English abstract: The writing characters of different nationalities seem to be different, and the pronunciations of languages are also different. But in fact, they are intertwined. Previous studies have basically reached a consensus on the evolutionary relationship between alphabetical languages, established the theory of single origin of alphabets, and put forward the hypothesis that there is an evolutionary relationship between the original alphabets and the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, there are few studies on the relationships between hieroglyphic writing systems, especially between ancient Egyptian writing and ancient Chinese characters. Combining the original research results of two books: Discovery of Xia Dynasty and The Origin of Civilization, this article makes a systematic review of the achievements in the comparative study of contemporary human writing systems, seeks to establish the Egyptian origin of all well-researched Hieroglyphs and all alphabetical systems evolved, achieves the combination of Chinese and Western languages and the overall puzzle of human writing systems.

Feature Extraction of Ancient Chinese Characters Based on Deep Convolution Neural Network and Big Data Analysis.

In recent years, deep learning has made good progress and has been applied to face recognition, video monitoring, image processing, and other fields. In this big data background, deep convolution neural network has also received more and more attention. In order to extract the ancient Chinese characters effectively, the paper will discuss the structure model, pool process, and network training of deep convolution neural network and compare the algorithm with the traditional machine learning algorithm. The results show that the accuracy and recall rate of the Chinese characters in the plaque of Ming Dynasty can reach the peak, 81.38% and 81.31%, respectively. When the number of training samples increases to 50, the recognition rate of MFA is 99.72%, which is much higher than other algorithms. This shows that the algorithm based on deep convolution neural network and big data analysis has excellent performance and can effectively identify the Chinese characters under different dynasties, different sample sizes, and different interference factors, which can provide a powerful reference for the extraction of ancient Chinese characters.

An Analysis of Research and Development Status and Restrictive Factors of Ancient Chinese Character Computer Recognition

An Analysis of Research and Development Status and Restrictive Factors of Ancient Chinese Character Computer Recognition

A research on an intelligent recognition tool for bronze inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties

The intelligent recognition tool for bronze inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties—the “Shang Zhou Bronze Inscriptions Intelligent Mirror”—was successfully invented in Shanghai. This mirror, based on the computer technology of artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition and image retrieval, succeeds in automagical recognition of bronze inscriptions, both single letters and full texts. This research leads the trend of the AI recognition of Ancient Chinese characters and accumulates valuable experience for the development of inter-disciplinary research on Chinese character recognition. This essay emphasizes the importance of the bronze inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasty database in the AI recognition of bronze inscriptions, introduces the functional components of this tool, and shares the whole research process in order to offer experience for the related research on AI recognition of other types of Ancient Chinese characters as well as ideographs in the world scope. “Shang Zhou Bronze Inscriptions Intelligent Mirror” as a tool for bronze inscription recognition also has room for improvement and support, and guidance from experts in similar areas is greatly welcomed.

The linguistic principles of creating Alphabet and word orthogramms of Chinese putonghua

The Creation of the Alphabet and words spelling of Chinese Mandarin is a landmark event in the history of Chinese civilization. It breathes new life into ancient Chinese characters. Great “dumb” the Chinese character − for the first time since 1958 has become known to the whole world by sounds of Beijing speech. Today the two types of writing − Chinese Mandarin traditional ideographic and innovative phonographic writing, in their unity, provide the linguocultural unity of the Chinese society and the progress of science and technology of China. Millions of people in China and beyond are studying the Chinese language based on the sound letter standard of the words of Chinese Putonghua. Letter orthogramms of Chinese words provide tele- and Internet communication of hundreds of millions of Chinese. Based on the theory of Chinese phonological system elaborated within the frames of Russian Chinese studies, the technology of phonological system of Chinese in the alphabet and orthogramms of words of Chinese Putonghua is considered for the first time . Chinese alphabet, based on Latin letters and letter-spelling forms of Putonghua words are a huge scientific achievement of Chinese linguists. Outstanding contribution to the creation of the alphabet and letter words of Chinese Mandarin was made by a brilliant Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang (1906-2011), called the «father of pinyin zimu» or Chinese alphabet in China.

Филологические особенности даосского трактата «Дао Дэ Цзин» как неиссякаемый источник его герменевтических трактовок (на примере анализа первого параграфа и переводов на русский язык)

The article analyses philological peculiarities of the first chapter of “Tao Te Ching”, the fundamental Taoist text, which aroused numerous comments and was many times translated into different languages. The existing studies on “Tao Te Ching” consider hermeneutics of this ancient text and its philosophical meanings within the paradigm of the Taoist worldview, so the philological aspect was somehow neglected. The comprehensive approach to studying the Taoist canon from the philological viewpoint constitutes scientific originality of the research. The research objectives are as follows: to show that “Tao Te Ching” unique philological peculiarities lead to multiplicity of its hermeneutic interpretations and to identify peculiarities of this ancient Chinese text that often cause interpretation and translation difficulties. The findings indicate that hermeneutic interpretations, even the opposing ones, are conditioned by lexico-grammatical peculiarities of the text under study. Multiplicity of interpretations is due to the lack of fixed punctuation and the ability of the ancient Chinese characters to acquire the features of different parts of speech with different meanings.

Ancient Chinese Character Image Segmentation Based on Interval-Valued Hesitant Fuzzy Set

To address the low segmentation accuracy caused by the rich glyph styles of ancient Chinese characters and the complex layout of ancient Chinese books, which affects the retrieval and recognition results, an algorithm for the layout image analysis of ancient Chinese books and Chinese character image segmentation is proposed. The initial segmentation results were obtained through the projection method of the layout of ancient Chinese books, and the connected component analysis of the above results was carried out to determine the rough divided blocks of under-segmentation and over-segmentation. Considering under-segmentation of adhesive Chinese characters, the improved K-means clustering method was used to segment adhesive blocks to obtain single-character images. To address the over-segmentation of character components separation, a method based on interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set is proposed. This method analyzed the features of the connected component in the block, characterized the over-segmentation connected component. The hesitant fuzzy distances between other connected components and the standard merge evaluation interval number were calculated in sequence. The connected component with the smallest distance was preferentially merged with the over-segmentation connected component until no over-segmentation connected component remained in the block. The experimental segmentation accuracy was 89.94%.

A Study on the Alternative Script of Ancient Chinese Characters in Korean Stone Carvings: A Case Study of the Stone Tablet of Master Chinkam Sŏnsa

A Study on the Alternative Script of Ancient Chinese Characters in Korean Stone Carvings: A Case Study of the Stone Tablet of Master Chinkam Sŏnsa

《文字蒙求》의 한자 교학법 연구와 고대 한자 자료를 이용한 오류 수정

《文字蒙求》의 한자 교학법 연구와 고대 한자 자료를 이용한 오류 수정

Self‐assembly: An intriguing relationship between structures of metal complexes and shapes of ancient Chinese characters

AbstractSelf‐assembly is a fundamental principle, which generates structural organization on all scales from molecules to galaxies. In the field of chemistry and materials science, the self‐assembly process driven by noncovalent interactions offers considerable advantages over the stepwise bond formation in the construction of large supramolecular assemblies with different sizes and shapes. The structures of metal clusters are mainly constructed from the assembly of mononuclear metal center to dinuclear, trinuclear species, and so on. It is of interest that Chinese ancient people also used this concept to create and encrypt characters. Herein, we report on an intriguing relationship between structures of metal complexes and the shapes of ancient Chinese characters, in which the self‐assembly principle is clearly demonstrated.

Improved Density Peak Clustering Based on Information Entropy for Ancient Character Images

A large number of IoT applications require the use of supervised machine learning, a type of machine learning algorithm that requires data to be labeled before the model can be trained. Because manually labeling large datasets is a time-consuming, error-prone, and expensive task, automated machine learning methods can be used. To tackle the challenge in which an ancient character image needs to be manually labeled, this paper explores the classification method of ancient Chinese character images based on density peak clustering. We design a metric function of density peak clustering and propose an improved density peak clustering method based on information entropy for ancient book image classification. The method enumerates the distance threshold of clustering, then calculates the information entropy of the clustering result, and determines the class distance threshold by analyzing the attenuation of the information entropy, thereby completing the image clustering process. The improved metric function is used to calculate the similarity between images. A greedy strategy is used as the basis of the merging operation of the class members to achieve the purpose of increasing the degree of information entropy attenuation. The experimental results on the dataset of the Yi character images prove that the method can accurately classify unknown character images of ancient books.

Abydos:考古文字完证尧舜禹的都城 (Abydos: Archaeological Characters Thoroughly Proved the Capital of Yao, Shun and Yu）

Chinese Aabstract: 摘要：通过古埃及圣书体象形文字与古汉字的比较，可以得出一系列结论：上埃及第八诺姆的象形文字名字就是汉字“冀”的原型。古代阿拜多斯城就是中国典籍记载的阳城，这是尧、舜、禹的都城。阳城也是冀州的都城，就像阿拜多斯为上埃及第八州的首府一样。古代提尼斯城的象形名字是汉字“翟”字原型。中国典籍记载大禹曾把都城从阳城迁到阳翟。涅伽达的象形文字名字是汉字“密”字象形原型，这曾是大禹（Narmer）的早期都城。 English Abstract: A series of conclusions can be drawn from the comparative study of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph characters and ancient Chinese characters: The hieroglyph name of eighth nome of Upper Egypt is the Chinese character Ji(冀). The ancient Abydos city is the Yang (阳) city which was the capital of Chinese recored several Emperors, Yao (Iry-Hor/Ro), Shun (Ka/Sekhen), Yu (Narmer). The Yang city was the capital of Ji state, just like Abydos was the capital of the eighth nome of Upper Egypt. The Thinis city is the Di(翟) city. The Chinese classics recorded that Yu (Narmer) moved to Yang Di from the Yang city. The hieroglyph name of Naqada is the chinese character Mi (密) which was ever the early capital of Yu(Narmer).