Envisioning the Future

This chapter is devoted to addressing the foremost issue in the current set of LP undertakings – standardization, and how standardization can be achieved. In Chapter 4, we have analytically described the main content of standardization – the four fixations, and their technological implications for Chinese computerization. In addition, elsewhere in this volume we have suggest that standardization is not only the key for enhancing all types of language software products, particularly those facilitating hanzi’s input and output, but that it also is a significant factor in the increasingly essential computerization of hanzi. Thus, the standardization issue has become the central tenet of modern Chinese LP. To address the question on how to make the LP compatible with socio-political changes, and the products of LP acceptable to an increasingly savvy population, this chapter synthesizes historical experience and the current situation, providing to a theoretical and descriptive framework for a further examination of the standardization issue.