# What are the best approach for Chinese/Japanese language indexing and searching? **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [May 1, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79 "2015-05-01T00:04:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![shaunak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/shaunak/32/6643_2.png) [@shaunak](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/shaunak)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/1 "2015-05-01T00:04:45Z")
Chinese and Japanese are hard to get right, but below I've included what you need to get the basics working. You will need to install the [**kuromoji plugin**](https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-analysis-kuromoji), the [**smartcn plugin**](https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-analysis-smartcn) and the [**icu plugin**](https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-analysis-icu). For search, you should use the `smartcn` analyzer for chinese, and the `kuromoji` analyzer for japanese. For aggregations, if you want to use the `terms` aggregation, then you just need to set the field you want to aggregate on to be `not_analyzed`. That way, it'll use the whole value of that field as the term. The typeahead search is where things get trickier. You should use the [completion suggester](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-suggesters-completion.html) for both of them, with `preserve_separators` set to `false` and without fuzziness. These suggesters will need a custom analyzer for each language. For Chinese, you need this: ```auto PUT /chinese { "settings": { "analysis": { "filter": { "pinyin": { "type": "icu_transform", "id": "Han-Latin" } }, "analyzer": { "autocomplete": { "tokenizer": "keyword", "filter": [ "pinyin", "lowercase", "cjk_width" ] } } } }, "mappings": { "doc": { "properties": { "search_text": { "type": "string", "analyzer": "smartcn" }, "aggs_text": { "type": "string", "index": "not_analyzed" }, "suggest_text": { "type": "completion", "index_analyzer": "autocomplete", "search_analyzer": "autocomplete", "preserve_separators": false } } } } } ``` And for Japanese, this: ```auto PUT /japanese { "settings": { "analysis": { "filter": { "romaji": { "type": "kuromoji_readingform", "use_romaji": true } }, "analyzer": { "autocomplete": { "tokenizer": "kuromoji", "filter": [ "lowercase", "cjk_width", "romaji" ] } } } }, "mappings": { "doc": { "properties": { "search_text": { "type": "string", "analyzer": "kuromoji" }, "aggs_text": { "type": "string", "index": "not_analyzed" }, "suggest_text": { "type": "completion", "index_analyzer": "autocomplete", "search_analyzer": "autocomplete", "preserve_separators": false } } } } } ``` Another issue that you may haven't encountered up until now is making autocomplete work in the browser. The problem is that eg Chinese users need to type several characters to produce a single pictogram, but the browser will only fire the keypress event once the whole pictogram has been entered. Really you want to intercept the keypresses earlier in the process. This Stack Overflow question may help point you in the right direction: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7316886/detecting-ime-input-before-enter-pressed-in-javascript](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7316886/detecting-ime-input-before-enter-pressed-in-javascript) ---
**Author:** ![Morriaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Morriaty](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Morriaty)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 3:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/2 "2016-05-05T03:06:14Z")
Hi, @shaunak! The approach helps me a lot on Chinese search suggestions. Thank you very much. But I still met some problems. For example, I have some docs contained a token `代金券`, which means coupon, spells `dai jin quan` in pinyin. Then I used `_suggest` to search a misspelled token `代经券`, which spells `dai jing quan` in pinyin. There was no hit of this query. So what's the problem? Thank you for your help ---
**Author:** ![Morriaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Morriaty](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Morriaty)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 6:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/3 "2016-05-05T06:57:02Z")
I got know. The completion suggester does not do spell correction. So how can I do Chinese search suggestions with term/phrase suggester? ---
**Author:** ![medcl.net](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/medcl.net/32/4414_2.png) [@medcl.net](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/medcl.net)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 11:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/4 "2016-05-06T11:56:13Z")
Hi @Morriaty There is no difference with Chinese and English, to your problem you should config `fuzziness` and `min_length` to made the suggester return the `代金券` by input `代经券`, check out this reference: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.3/search-suggesters-completion.html#fuzzy](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.3/search-suggesters-completion.html#fuzzy) ---
**Author:** ![Morriaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Morriaty](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Morriaty)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 2:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/5 "2016-05-09T02:14:17Z")
@medcl1 thank you for you reply! I have tried the fuzzy query, but I don't understand what the parameter `min_length` mean. > `min_length` Minimum length of the input before fuzzy suggestions are returned, defaults 3 For example, I searched with input `大`, of which character length is 1 and pinyin length is 2, with `min_length` set to 3. I expected there should be no hit because the length of the input is lower than the `min_length`. However, I got the right results. ```auto { "suggest": { "text": "大", "full": { "completion": { "field" : "name.full_pinyin", "fuzzy": { "fuziness": 2, "min_length": 3 } } }, "size": 0 } "suggest": { "full": [ { "text": "大", "offset": 0, "length": 1, "options": [ { "text": "带开关插座", "score": 4 }, { "text": "大自然", "score": 2 }, { "text": "大自然地板", "score": 2 }, { "text": "代金券", "score": 1 } ] } ] } ``` ---
**Author:** ![Morriaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Morriaty](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Morriaty)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/6 "2016-05-09T02:35:47Z")
I understand, `大` was exact query, not fuzzy query. Thank you all the same, @medcl1! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-the-best-approach-for-chinese-japanese-language-indexing-and-searching/79/7 "2017-07-05T22:53:07Z")