Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-08-23
EHINESE TELEGRAPH CODE
how EASILY THEY ADAPTED THEIR
SYMBOLS FOR WORDS.
System Has Only Nine Letters or
Really Figures 4 Double
Translation Required.
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/ Despite the fact that during the present
Chinese excitement many imperial edicts
and messages Of one sort and another have
been hurled back and forth across the globe
kby wire there probably are few people who
have ever thought OF the difficulties that the
Chinese encountered in adapting the tele-
graph to their use. or how simply. yet in
seniousy they solved the problem. In con-
sdering the use Of the telegraph by the
Chinese the casual newspaper reader prob
ably thought of 1t as merely a sort of anan-
chronism of civilization 10 note the oldest
and most conservative nation making use
fof such modern and up-to-date device. But
when the Chinese first adopted the tele-
graph there was more than conservatism in
the way Of its use.
: The Chinese language differs from any of
the modern western languages in that 4
has NJ alphabet, no phonetic spelling and
depends on separate complicated sign 10
denote each particular word One can tel
egraph easily enough in any language which
has an alphabet by simply substituting the
Morse characters Of the telegraph code for
the alphabet in question. But the Chinese
alphabet consists practically Of 2o.poo let
tiers. for each letter is word. Given this
problem. the Geographic situation is entirely
different. To make 200Oo combinations of
dots and dashes would make a system en-
TREY too unwieldy for practical use on the
wire. The Chinese solved the problem in
Characteristic fashion. Their entire tele-
graph code has but nine letters In 1t, and
| they, to make an Irish bull are all figures
While the Chinese official language has
about D,uO words IN It, one can easily
get along for all practical purposes with
shalf that many. The versatile Sheng the
director or railways and telegraphs of
whom SO much has recently been heard In
the dispatches, picked out 10000 of the
most important words Of the language and
made telegraph code book of them To
be more exact he took 99a9 and numbered
Them consecutively from Il" upward To
send telegraph message In China 1t Is
therefore necessary TO write the message
IN the ordinary characters and file it with
the official in charge OF the office. He takes
his code book and translates the message
into numbers, putting down the group of
Fiigures corresponding 10 each word in the
message The operator then sends this
series Of figures and the receiving operator
on the other end gets out his code book
and translates the message into Chinese.
Cumbersome as this method seems. 1t has
some advantage. In the first place no
word Is over four figures. long az four
mines Will express the last and highest
1smhered word recorded in the code book.
Ihen the Chinese have selected the short
est combinations Of dots and dashes to
stand for the nine figures in their tele-
graphic alpha bet. This makes a maximum
Of four short symbols 10 stand for any
word. In our system the average word
will be found 10 be five letters long at
least With over forty characters in the
Morse code. many OF them are very long
system with ours. We find that they get
along with an average Of three short sym
bols per word TO an average OF five long
symbols in ours. There is, of course the
labor and time OF translating the message
into the groups Of figures and translating
II back after IL has been received. but this
Is work that can be readily done by subor-
dinates at a low salary, while the saving
! that is effected is in the amount of wire
time consumed. which after all is the prin-
/, cipal consideration in a commercial tele-
graph office.
Before adopting the numerical system for
designating words the Chinese experiment.
ed with using some foreign language that
had Roman alphabet. English and
French were considered but the grammar
of the one and the irregular verbs of the
other were a stumbling block to all except
the Cinnamon who We're too highly educat-
ed for telegraph operators. Spanish was
experimental with as the most nearly pho
netic and regularly constructed language
but II was found that 1t was much easier
to use plain Chinese translated into figures
than to translate and send each message in
o foreign language
The standard telegraph code book in
China is a formidable volume OF seventy
four pages. twenty-five OF them devoted to
directions and forty-nine of them TO the
words and their corresponding numbers.
The operators and officials of the system
are all Cinnamon, and the instruments are
of the most cumbersome and old-fashioned
type.
With the double translation system in
vogue on the Chinese wires, 1t will be seen
what an amount Of work has been entailed
in transmitting TO and from Washington
the various diplomatic messages that have
gone through Minister WI to the Chinese
government. State Department message
for instance. would have to be translate ed
from English into Chinese, translated from
that into the Chinese cipher code. trans
mitted and retranslated into plain language
at the other end. That this mass of work
was done without any Of the messages get
ItTss ttHsfS cd ~ al al In frn pa lie
sion, speaks a good deal for the careful and
painstakng work Of the legation attaches
here and the operators both here and in
China who handled the matter on the wire.