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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.
