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As a Japanese native speaker who has to enter many Japanese texts on a daily basis both on a PC and on a smartphone, I feel obliged to point out that the qualit

As a Japanese native speaker who has to enter many Japanese texts on a daily basis both on a PC and on a smartphone, I feel obliged to point out that the quality of an IME (a piece of software providing possible kanji/alphabet sequences for a given phonetic relization), is far better on a PC (its built-in MS-IME, to be precise) than on a smartphone (iOS). I started looking for some example to show how bad iOS's IME is, and I found it for the first try: it returns a wrong candidate for the first suggestion for "かんじをにゅうりょくする" (to enter kanji), returning "感じを入力する" (to enter sense) rather than the correct "漢字を入力する". Note that "漢字" (kanji) and "感じ" (sense) have the exact same phonetic relization: Both of them are pronounced as kanji. It seems as if iOS's IME does not take into account any contexts at all. If it did, how could it have calculated entering sense (?) is more likely than entering kanji? This kind of absurd error would rarely happen with Microsoft's IME and it always stresses me out when entering long texts in Japanese on a smartphone.

kalleboo 8y ago
The iOS IME definitely uses context but I think the default training just isn't very good. If I try your example it starts suggesting 感じ, but once I add を it changes to 漢字を. But this is also why there is a large market in third party keyboards/IMEs, even on Windows. From the classic ATOK to the modern Google Japanese IME
TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
I think iOS's IME expects you to segment things yourself, rather than typing several words strung together and then pressing the suggest button?
hrktb 8y ago
I think this might be the training (or lack of) of your device. I get it right on mine: https://imgur.com/a/83VCSwo https://imgur.com/a/83VCSwo Bear in mind I use a mac wih the same icloud account, and have years of data on it. Part of it must be shared. I haven’t use MS’IME in a long time, but I remember it being only marginally better than Apple’s. The main differentiators for me where names (places, stations, peoples).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
imunolion 8y ago
There are some better input methods for Japanese, and they are not available on smartphones. SKK What you are talking above is phrase-wise conversion. However, using SKK can easily distinguish "感じ" and "漢字" by "KanJi" and "Kanji", by explicitly specifying where the conversion starts and ends with Shift key. SKK can massively reduce the conversion candidates, so that people can faster obtain converted sentences.SKK is a good input method, but doesn't exist for smartphones. T-Code (or TUT-Code) We also have t-code input methods on computers but not on smartphones. It assigns 2 key strokes into one letter(kana or frequently used kanji) directly. For example, "kd" will type "の" and "is" will be "東". This input method is also very efficient and boost input speed, however it is designed for physical full size keyboard with 8 fingers. Its users can't do the same with software keyboard because they remember the key strokes with fingers.
- peterburkimsher 8y ago
  If anybody is interested in a Kanji dataset for improved input methods, please check out the 52,835 characters I gathered. https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese-characters-dataset-92d4065cc7cc#2e67-5b7da3579715 https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese-characters-d... I made my own input method for Chinese Hanzi, which decomposes the characters and lets me find characters based on their IDS codes. It also predicts words both forwards and backwards (in case you don't know the first character, but do know the second). https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io
antpls 8y ago
It would be interesting to compare the experience with a recent and updated Android phone, with the Google Keyboard. My bet is that Google's one is better at it, and improves rapidly. (I don't speak Japanese, sadly)
codedokode 8y ago
Google IME keyboard for Andoid also gives "感じ..." as a first suggestion for this phrase.
yoz-y 8y ago
iOS input for non-latin or less used languages is clearly lacking. There are third party keyboards which do better predictions, at least for Chinese there is Sogou which apparently also completes things like popular (trending) names and expressions. But one does not even have to go that far, autocorrect for Slovak is quite a disaster to the point where I'd like to be able to disable it on per-keyboard basis.
Razengan 8y ago
If you have also tried the Japanese IME on macOS, how does it compare to the Windows version in your opinion?

kalleboo 8y ago

The iOS IME definitely uses context but I think the default training just isn't very good. If I try your example it starts suggesting 感じ, but once I add を it changes to 漢字を. But this is also why there is a large market in third party keyboards/IMEs, even on Windows. From the classic ATOK to the modern Google Japanese IME

TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago

I think iOS's IME expects you to segment things yourself, rather than typing several words strung together and then pressing the suggest button?

hrktb 8y ago

I think this might be the training (or lack of) of your device. I get it right on mine: https://imgur.com/a/83VCSwo https://imgur.com/a/83VCSwo Bear in mind I use a mac wih the same icloud account, and have years of data on it. Part of it must be shared. I haven’t use MS’IME in a long time, but I remember it being only marginally better than Apple’s. The main differentiators for me where names (places, stations, peoples).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

imunolion 8y ago

There are some better input methods for Japanese, and they are not available on smartphones. SKK What you are talking above is phrase-wise conversion. However, using SKK can easily distinguish "感じ" and "漢字" by "KanJi" and "Kanji", by explicitly specifying where the conversion starts and ends with Shift key. SKK can massively reduce the conversion candidates, so that people can faster obtain converted sentences.SKK is a good input method, but doesn't exist for smartphones. T-Code (or TUT-Code) We also have t-code input methods on computers but not on smartphones. It assigns 2 key strokes into one letter(kana or frequently used kanji) directly. For example, "kd" will type "の" and "is" will be "東". This input method is also very efficient and boost input speed, however it is designed for physical full size keyboard with 8 fingers. Its users can't do the same with software keyboard because they remember the key strokes with fingers.

peterburkimsher 8y ago
If anybody is interested in a Kanji dataset for improved input methods, please check out the 52,835 characters I gathered. https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese-characters-dataset-92d4065cc7cc#2e67-5b7da3579715 https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese-characters-d... I made my own input method for Chinese Hanzi, which decomposes the characters and lets me find characters based on their IDS codes. It also predicts words both forwards and backwards (in case you don't know the first character, but do know the second). https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io

antpls 8y ago

It would be interesting to compare the experience with a recent and updated Android phone, with the Google Keyboard. My bet is that Google's one is better at it, and improves rapidly. (I don't speak Japanese, sadly)

codedokode 8y ago

Google IME keyboard for Andoid also gives "感じ..." as a first suggestion for this phrase.

yoz-y 8y ago

iOS input for non-latin or less used languages is clearly lacking. There are third party keyboards which do better predictions, at least for Chinese there is Sogou which apparently also completes things like popular (trending) names and expressions. But one does not even have to go that far, autocorrect for Slovak is quite a disaster to the point where I'd like to be able to disable it on per-keyboard basis.

Razengan 8y ago

If you have also tried the Japanese IME on macOS, how does it compare to the Windows version in your opinion?