The Font that Never Was: Linotype and the “Phonetic Chinese Alphabet” of 1921

IF 0.3 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS Philological Encounters Pub Date : 2018-11-27 DOI:10.1163/24519197-12340049
Thomas S. Mullaney
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Since the invention and globalization of hot metal printing in the United States and Europe, engineers and entrepreneurs dreamt of a day when linotype and monotype technologies would absorb Chinese script into its growing repertoire of non-Latin writing systems, just as they had Arabic, Armenian, Burmese, Devanagari, Hebrew, Korean, and over one hundred other scripts. In the early 1920s, the much-celebrated release of a new font—the “Chinese Phonetic Alphabet” by Mergenthaler Linotype, and later by the Monotype corporation—led many to believe that the day had finally come. This article charts out the quixotic history of Linotype and Monotype’s efforts to enter the Chinese market, examining the linguistic challenges that had long prevented China’s absorption into a Western-dominated “hot metal empire,” the design process by which artists in Brooklyn and London crafted these new fonts, and ultimately the cultural misunderstandings that doomed the projects to failure.
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从未有过的字体:Linotype与1921年的“拼音”
自从热金属印刷术在美国和欧洲发明并实现全球化以来,工程师和企业家们梦想着有一天,linotype和monotype技术将把中国文字吸收到其日益增长的非拉丁文字系统中,就像他们有阿拉伯语、亚美尼亚语、缅甸语、天成文书、希伯来语、韩语和一百多种其他文字一样。20世纪20年代初,Mergenthaler Linotype和后来的Monotype公司推出了一种备受赞誉的新字体“汉语拼音”,这让许多人相信这一天终于到来了。这篇文章描绘了Linotype和Monotype进入中国市场的不切实际的历史,考察了长期以来阻碍中国融入西方主导的“热金属帝国”的语言挑战,布鲁克林和伦敦的艺术家们制作这些新字体的设计过程,以及最终导致项目失败的文化误解。
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来源期刊
Philological Encounters
Philological Encounters Arts and Humanities-Language and Linguistics
CiteScore
0.70
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0.00%
发文量
13
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