Through his early years, he moved through six different countries including France, Brazil and the United States, picking up numerous local languages.

In 1968, while traveling, Halpern met a Japanese citizen who introduced him to kanji, beginning his lifelong interest in Chinese characters.

In addition to having published regular columns in Japanese magazines and periodicals and having appeared on numerous variety shows,[5] Halpern has given hundreds of public lectures on lexicography, language-learning, and other language- and culture-related topics.

[9] CJKI has also produced a large number of technical dictionaries covering such topics as mechanical engineering, economics, and medicine.

Aside from dictionary compilation, CJKI compliles large-scale lexical databases covering a total of approximately 50 million entries in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic.

[3] Halpern has written many academic and research papers [15] and is the author of dozens of books and articles[16] - below is a selected list.