cjk_simplify() maps traditional Han characters to simplified;
cjk_traditionalize() maps the other way. Characters outside Han, and
characters with no counterpart, are left alone.
Arguments
- x
A character vector. Anything else is coerced with
as.character(). That coercion is R's, not this package's, so a numeric vector is measured as R chooses to write it – which moves withoptions(scipen)andoptions(OutDec), and can therefore differ between sessions. Convert deliberately if you mean to measure numbers; these verbs are for text. A list is not coerced –as.character()deparses one rather than coercing it, so the text measured would be the R code that builds the list – so a list, a data frame or a function is an error naming what to do instead.
Details
This is ICU's Simplified-Traditional pair, and it is context-aware
rather than a per-character table. Simplified to traditional is genuinely
one-to-many – U+53D1 is U+767C ("to send") or U+9AEE ("hair") depending
on the word, and U+5E72 is U+4E7E, U+5E79 or U+5E72 – and ICU picks
correctly from the surrounding characters. Twenty such words were
checked, including the ones where the same character splits both ways
("after" against "empress", "inside" against "kilometre"), and every one
came out right.
What it does not do is substitute regional vocabulary. The two standards differ in the words they use as well as in glyph shape, and that is lexical rather than orthographic. The simplified word for "software", U+8F6F U+4EF6, converts to U+8EDF U+4EF6 – the correct characters, and the wrong word in Taiwan, where the term is U+8EDF U+9AD4. "Mouse" becomes U+9F20 U+6A19 rather than U+6ED1 U+9F20.
So use these for script conversion, which is what they are good at, and reach for OpenCC when you need Taiwanese or Hong Kong idiom – its regional configurations are what carry that.
See also
cjk_romanize(), to_halfwidth() for the width axis.
Examples
# U+6F22 U+5B57 / U+6C49 U+5B57, "Han characters"
cjk_simplify("\u6f22\u5b57") # traditional -> simplified
#> [1] "汉字"
cjk_traditionalize("\u6c49\u5b57") # and back
#> [1] "漢字"
# context decides a one-to-many character: "hair" vs "to send"
cjk_traditionalize(c("\u5934\u53d1", "\u53d1\u9001"))
#> [1] "頭髮" "發送"
# but regional vocabulary is not substituted: the Taiwanese word differs
cjk_traditionalize("\u8f6f\u4ef6") # -> U+8EDF U+4EF6, not U+8EDF U+9AD4
#> [1] "軟件"