Converting chinese to pinyin [closed]

Question

I've found places on the web such as http://www.chinesetopinyin.com that convert Chinese characters to pinyin (romanization).

Does anyone know how to do this, or have a database that can be parsed?

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EDIT: I'm using C# but would actually prefer a database/flatfile.

Answer 1

possible solution using Python:

I think that Unicode database contains pinyin romanizations for chinese characters, but these are not included in unicodedata module data.

however, you can use some external libraries, like cjklib, example:

# coding: UTF-8
import cjklib
from cjklib.characterlookup import CharacterLookup

c = u'好'

cjk = CharacterLookup('T')
readings = cjk.getReadingForCharacter(c, 'Pinyin')
for r in readings:
    print r

output:

hāo
hǎo
hào

UPDATE

cjklib comes with an standalone cjknife utility, which micht help. some usage is described here