This paper introduces the current status of artificial intelligence-based recognition of Chinese characters and machine translation of Chinese characters (Classical Chinese texts), which is currently underway in Korea, and suggests future tasks. For the recognition of Chinese characters, this paper discusses the Chinese character segmentation using the Mask R-CNN algorithm and the Chinese character classification method using the Inception- Resnet-V2 algorithm, and explores the significance and limitations of the construction of Chinese character forms database. Regarding machine translation, this paper looks at the development of machine translation technology from Rule-Based Machine Translation (RBMT) to Neural Machine Translation (NMT); then, introduces the principles of neural network machine translation and techniques applied to improve performance. There are two types of machine translation for Classical Chinese texts: the machine translator provided by Baidu and the translator developed by the Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics (ITKC). Although the Baidu machine translator has various errors, the overall translation performance is somewhat higher than that of ITKC's machine translator. The ITKC's translator performs better than the Baidu translator in certain areas, but falls short of the Baidu translator in translating various types of Classical Chinese texts. In order to improve the performance of the machine translation of Classical Chinese texts, it is necessary tobuild a cloud-based translation platform, expand a high-quality parallel corpus, develop an additional system to improve machine translation performance, and develop a highly reliable translation evaluation method.

There are a lot of problems in the existing databases of ancient characters, such as the digital processing obstacles of Gaiji (characters excluded in character sets), the defects of information technology, and a lack of completeness. The newly released “digital resource library for intelligent Internet search of ancient characters” makes the following breakthrough: it achieves full coverage of all types of ancient characters in all dynasties, and realizes the carrier conversion of character data with strict digital standards, allows the the further processing of materials and the intelligent recognition search technology, and forms the series of thematic databases. There are two major tasks for the future development of the digital resource library of Chinese characters: the development of international standards for ancient character sets, and the further processing and sorting of ancient character materials for the intelligent research of ancient characters.

The Korean Ritual Studies Series is a compilation of the works about Korean ritual studies, which makes a great contribution to scholarship in this area. Relying on a number of major national programs in China and South Korea, digital collation and research the Korean Ritual Studies Series was made to create into a “literature database of Korean ritual studies” by cooperation between the Center for the Study and Application of Chinese Characters (CSACC) of East China Normal University (ECNU) which is a key research institute of humanities and social science approved by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and the research institutions of Kyungsung University including the Center for the Study of Chinese Characters in Korea, the Research Society of Korean Ritual Studies and the Academy of Korean Studies. The basic framework of the database contains six sub-databases, which are fully correlated with each other according to relevant attributes. The database provides search capability, with three search functions, including catalog index, full-text retrieval and a word index. It is a major achievement of an international cooperation program supported by a multilevel international platform. It provides a large sustainable development space for the “literature database of Korean ritual studies”, which is an indispensable and important part of the “public database of Chinese characters” created by the Center for the Study and Application of Chinese Characters (CSACC) of East China Normal University (ECNU). The three key breakthroughs are needed for its further development: (I) Achieving the data association, comparative research and web publishing of Chinese and Korean ritual literature, establishing an Asian big data ritual research and application platform, supporting the research of Chinese and Korean ritual cultures, the communication history of ritual culture, the development history of Chinese characters and the research of many other disciplines, and meeting the multi-functional needs of ritual research, teaching and communication while completing a comprehensive digital connection of the internal resources of the database. (II) Deeply tapping into the massive Chinese character writing and memory data to create a 21st century database for written texts in the Sinosphere on the basis of digital processing and research of Korean ritual literature. (III) Realizing the multidimensional intelligent automatic recognition and interpretation of original literature written and memorized in Chinese characters such as ancient Chinese and Korean ritual literature, family mottoes and letters of noble families and great clans as well as folk handcopied books, and opening a new era of intelligent interpretation and research of the written texts in the Sinosphere through image recognition technology.

This paper addresses the following: First, it summarizes the history of the IT environment of sinology in Japan with a focus on Chinese character processing. Then, it introduces the open-access digital archive projects in Japan as well as ICT-based research activities. An attempt was made to allow multiple Chinese characters/Chinese input from PCs in Japan beginning in the 1980s. At first, Chinese characters were implemented applying special hardware or software to JIS Chinese character encoding. After the 1990s, these approaches disappeared with the spread of Unicode and a multilingual mixed environment became more widely available. The digital archives in Japan are described focusing on databases, digital libraries, etc. Although Japan’s number of independent databases has decreased, the paper examines the current contributions to sinology studies, including a Chinese character DB that interlinks with Unicode.org and digital literature archives in Chinese characters that are held by universities and public institutions. Additionally, there are numerous research studies on humanities and oriental studies as research associations and societies have been in operation for several years.

Borrowing sounds is the phenomenon of borrowing the tones of "replaceable characters" to read the sounds of particular Chinese letters. The "Replaceable pseudo-character" is a phenomenon of borrowing homonyms, or words with similar pronunciations to read a certain Chinese character. This is called the borrowed-sound character, and both the original and the borrowed words co-exist. However, in countries in the region where Chinese characters are used such as Vietnam, Japan and Korea, there is also the phenomenon of borrowing the sounds and shapes of Chinese characters to record native languages. By using quantitative statistical methods, interdisciplinary research methods, and an oriented approach to grammatology 文字學 and etymology 語源學, this article will examine the phenomenon of borrowing sounds found in the Linh Nam Chich Quai 嶺南摭怪 (the Collection of the Strange Tales of the Linh Nam Realm) compiled during the Ly-Tran dynasties (XI-XIV centuries). This article provides a comparison of similar phenomena in some Chinese character works and epitaphs of the Ly Tran dynasty in Vietnam and the Nihon ryoiki 日本靈異記 of Japan. It argues that borrowing sounds are a common feature found in the works from these early periods which recorded folktales due to the influence of Han culture, and Vietnamese literature should be not placed outside the general rules of that influence.

The oracle bone characters do not represent words of the language but thoughts or concepts. The bone text did not record an oral language. Perhaps we can say that it recorded an artificial language. The French scholar, Léon Vandermeersch says that the oracle bone inscriptions are a formula. A better analogy is to say that it is like a computer language. Is it English? The answer is yes, but it is not like English at all. Similar to Sumerian protocuneiform writing, the nature of Chinese writing is fundamentally ideographic, in which concepts or thoughts are represented rather than speech. This paper will present hundreds of examples of the oracle bone scripts that demonstrate these qualities. Excavated deer antlers Г-shaped axe and hoe and Г-shaped spear are figurative in the Oracle script jin 斤 (axe) and bing 兵 (weapon). A number of ideograms are derived from the Г-axe character. The ideograms of Sumer, Mo-so, English and Oracle script, are created from thoughts and by recording these thoughts, they are similar to narrative arts that express emotions. So an ideograph, which records ideas, not words or sounds, sometime also creates language. In addition, other kinds of small and light antler Г-shaped spear can be tied to the front end of a long slender and flexible pole, waved in a swinging motion instead of thrust. This weapon has a much longer killing distance than a spear for thrust. Bing-Г (兵) perhaps is the key technology of Shandong Longshan Culture from the Central Plains, and the predecessor of Ge-Г (戈).