On digitize public-domain Chinese books or other resources

For the problem of Chinese character, it is not the case, in fact by some input method(for example Wubi method ), you can just input the characters by the structure of characters rather than their pronunciation. And Wubi is popular in China.

We are just at the stage from ideas to concrete plan. I will draft the detail of the plan recently. and I don't think it is a big project.

Just be sure not to underestimate what is involved - I am sure Amazon and Google have a strong interest here to be sure.

For Goldzahn - I already raised the issue of older words. The Kangxi dictionary has under 50,000 characters - which likely covers most ones to be found in out-of-copyright material. Apparently people are considered proficient with a knowledge of about 7,000 characters (which combine to form a much larger number of words). I therefore would defer to Mountain that the task is doable.