"Did you mean: 艺轩国"
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Searching for a Chinese name in my gmail archive this morning, I was interested to see that Helpful Google is now transliterating between pinyin and hanzi:
I didn't mean 艺轩国, as it happens, but it's nice to know that if that's what I had wanted, gmail would have been ready to help.
Nuno said,
September 3, 2013 @ 11:11 am
Seems like a neat idea.
Is 艺轩国 an actual term? Art pavillion country?
Did you mean: 已选过?
Victor Mair said,
September 3, 2013 @ 11:19 am
Nuno beat me to the punch. I was just about to post this:
Did you mean yǐ xuǎnguò 已選過 ("already selected")?
BTW, this feature has already been working in Google Translate for a long time now, and I really have appreciated it. It seems that they've figured out a way to bring it over into their gmail search function.
I never cease to marvel at the wonders of Google.
Victor Mair said,
September 3, 2013 @ 11:41 am
Yìxuān 藝軒 is the name of an art gallery (it is called Art Beatus in English), with stores in Hong Kong and Vancouver. It is sometimes associated with the word guó 國 ("country").
Rosemary Kuwahata said,
September 3, 2013 @ 4:42 pm
It works with Japanese as well, and has for a long time. I simply thought that it was due to the workings of the Microsoft IME function.
Neil Dolinger said,
September 4, 2013 @ 11:51 am
Since Mark said he was "searching for a Chinese name" while using Gmail, I took this to mean he was looking for a person named "Yixuan Guo" (by western convention). If this person was living in the Sinosphere they would more likely go by "Guo Yixuan". Perhaps if "Guo Yixuan" were entered into the search box in Gmail, the surname "郭" would appear in the transliteration box, followed by a common given name romanized as "Yixuan". I am unable to access Gmail at work to test this idea, but I wonder whether Google's algorithms have progressed to this level.