Good dictionary

[phalos]

Good day.

I hope to practice my translating skills, but I need good dictionaries.

Can anyone recommend software dictionaries?

Or Online dictionaries?
-I use JWPCE, but it seems lacking.

Print dictionaries are useful. However, my eyesight is poor so I don't like them.

Thanks in advance

-phalos

[Bueller_007]

Good day.

I hope to practice my translating skills, but I need good dictionaries.

Can anyone recommend software dictionaries?

Or Online dictionaries?
-I use JWPCE, but it seems lacking.

Print dictionaries are useful. However, my eyesight is poor so I don't like them.

Thanks in advance

-phalos

Almost all English speakers use edict:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/j_edict.html

It's designed primarily by English-speaking volunteers though, so it often fails to capture the nuances of the Japanese word. There are lots of supplemental dictionaries on the site (i.e. Japanese names dictionary, Buddhism dictionary, etc.)

A good supplement to this is EIJIRO. You can buy it on CD in almost all Japanese bookstores, or download it (not free) if you google for it. There's a free online version here:
http://www.alc.co.jp/

But this one is designed by Japanese speakers, so the English wording is often quite strange.

Another good method is to look for the word on Wikipedia. Then find the equivalent Japanese or English-language page (from the interwiki link).

If all else fails, you need a Japanese-Japanese dictionary. THE Japanese dictionary is the Kojien (広辞苑) dictionary. It's the equivalent of the Oxford or Merriam-Webster dictionaries in English. I don't have one, but I imagine it's DAMN expensive.

So a good (free) online replacement is:
http://www.goo.ne.jp/

I'm sure there are J-J software dictionaries you can download too, but I don't know of any.

If you're on a Mac, you should be using JEDict as your dictionary software, as another poster pointed out recently. It can read not only JEDict (and related) files, but also EIJIRO,if you can get your hands on a copy.

[phalos]

Thanks!

It seems I can't order the online version, because I don't see any option in addresses for Foreigners.
So, I'll have to get the book.

Thanks again,

-phalos

[Bueller_007]

Thanks!

It seems I can't order the online version, because I don't see any option in addresses for Foreigners.
So, I'll have to get the book.

Thanks again,

-phalos

Ah, if you are talking about Eijiro, it's not a book, it's a CD.

[phalos]

At any rate, I've just imported it from Amazon JP.

I cannot find an online download order form anywhere.

-phalos

[Bueller_007]

At any rate, I've just imported it from Amazon JP.

I cannot find an online download order form anywhere.

-phalos

I've not tried it myself, so I don't know, but I googled for it and got this. I think this is the download page:
http://www.eijiro.jp/get.htm

[Belton]

Another thing about Ejiro is that it is all kanji. No furigana. It's for Japanese people who want to look up an English meaning. It therefore assumes knowledge of kanji readings.

That said this guy, Peter Rivard has a furigana database for it which might be useful.
http://www.peterrivard.com/
It's a PDIC file so depending on your dictionary reader you may have to convert it. (The reader with Ejiro can do that). With it installed you can look up a word you know the reading of in order to get the kanji.

He also has some instructions on how to buy the online version. It's complex. It's all Japanese. It's through a Japanese paypal like site and apparently you need a Japanese address although foreign credit cards are acceptable. I decided Amazon JP was good enough for me even if it wasn't as up to date a version. How many words does one need?

[Bueller_007]

Another thing about Ejiro is that it is all kanji. No furigana. It's for Japanese people who want to look up an English meaning. It therefore assumes knowledge of kanji readings.

That said this guy, Peter Rivard has a furigana database for it which might be useful.
http://www.peterrivard.com/
It's a PDIC file so depending on your dictionary reader you may have to convert it. (The reader with Ejiro can do that). With it installed you can look up a word you know the reading of in order to get the kanji.

He also has some instructions on how to buy the online version. It's complex. It's all Japanese. It's through a Japanese paypal like site and apparently you need a Japanese address although foreign credit cards are acceptable. I decided Amazon JP was good enough for me even if it wasn't as up to date a version. How many words does one need?

Or you can just use edict for the readings. The two together (EIJIRO + EDICT) are a powerful combination.

Newer versions of EIJIRO contain just about everything that you could ever imagine. From obscure movie titles from the 1940s to medical terms and legal terms most native English speakers don't understand.

Personally I'm waiting for it to go "gold" (i.e. version 1.0) before I buy it. Until then, the online version + edict are good enough for me.

[Belton]

Ejiro 1.5 million entries (and more if you include the other 3 files. that was version 0.81 its at 0.95(?) now and 2.1 million plus)
edict 0.12 million entries

That said edict is more than enough for me usually and ejiro is mainly giving me extra compounds and examples. You wouldn't think it'd work with such a huge difference in entries but it does. I installed Peter Rivards list but I seldom seem to use it.

Ejiro is a snip at 2400円　my basic printed dictionary wasn't much less than that.

I must say I gave up on ejiro's bundled reader fairly soon and just used the data. JEDict on the Mac is more useful to me because it's easier to compile custom lists and use multiple dictionaries.

PDIC Viewer is fast however and formats the returns nicely, if I could have highlighted and copied I might have stuck with it. ...　And it doesn't have direct Japanese input support via kotoeri, it transfers from a bar at the bottom of the screen... And when I do copy it seems to be in those favourite encodings of Japan JIS or EUC not UTF so none of my other programs understands it and all I get is mojibake.
The windows reader looks better and seems to have more features. Not that I would ever envy Windows or anything

[Bueller_007]

Ejiro 1.5 million entries (and more if you include the other 3 files. that was version 0.81 its at 0.95(?) now and 2.1 million plus)
edict 0.12 million entries

That said edict is more than enough for me usually and ejiro is mainly giving me extra compounds and examples. You wouldn't think it'd work with such a huge difference in entries but it does. I installed Peter Rivards list but I seldom seem to use it.

Ejiro is a snip at 2400円　my basic printed dictionary wasn't much less than that.

I must say I gave up on ejiro's bundled reader fairly soon and just used the data. JEDict on the Mac is more useful to me because it's easier to compile custom lists and use multiple dictionaries.

PDIC Viewer is fast however and formats the returns nicely, if I could have highlighted and copied I might have stuck with it. ...　And it doesn't have direct Japanese input support via kotoeri, it transfers from a bar at the bottom of the screen... And when I do copy it seems to be in those favourite encodings of Japan JIS or EUC not UTF so none of my other programs understands it and all I get is mojibake.
The windows reader looks better and seems to have more features. Not that I would ever envy Windows or anything

The number of entries in edict may be close to EIJIRO, but the QUALITY is nowhere near comparison.

For example, if you look up the word "blind", "deaf" or "mute" in edict, you get such wonderful Japanese words as "mekura", "tsunbo" and "oshi" (which is--incorrectly, I believe--translated in edict as "deaf-mute"). These are amongst the most offensive, politically-incorrect words in the Japanese language, and there's no warning about this in edict whatsoever. As I recall, the politically correct terms "--no fujiyuu-na hito" don't appear at all, except in the examples file, probably because we English speakers felt that the translation was too obvious to submit.

The word "demodori" is translated in edict as "divorced woman" or something, when in fact, it means "divorced woman who has to move back home with her parents" and is quite offensive. The word "makeinu" is simply translated as "underdog, loser", when in fact, it doesn't mean "underdog" in any circumstances ever (some English speaker merely thought that this would be a "clever" translation), and it misses an extremely common, extremely offensive use for the word: "woman over the age of thirty who is single and has no children".

Edict is good for looking up rare-ass Japanese words that no one ever uses, ever. It's also good for getting a general understanding of a word, but rarely gives you the connotation or the fine details. It's also rotten for E-J translation simply because the people creating it didn't submit the proper English words. So "autistic" for example, doesn't appear at all. This normally wouldn't be a problem; you just look up "autism" and take its adjective form and you're good to go. But edict lists the Japanese word for "autism" (I believe it is "jiheishou" or something) only as a noun. It doesn't mention that it also functions as a 'no'-adjective. It doesn"t mention that the word "hyakushou" (meaning "farmer") is bleeped when it is used on television unless there is a "-san" at the end. And on and on and on.

I can't recall if there are warnings in EIJIRO, but if there aren't, it's because the Japanese target audience already knows that these words are bad. I believe there are always warnings in EIJIRO if a target English word is politically charged. I know sometimes if you type an offensive Japanese word into EIJIRO, it will simply say "please see this other non-offensive entry with the same meaning".

edict is great for looking up readings, although there are mistakes, or for quick translations when I don't have the Internet available to me. enamdict is terribly, terribly bloated, but is actually the most useful of the lot. Otherwise, I go straight to Space ALC. I would never trust edict for J-E work. I'm working on a big revision now, based on the list of words that were banned from NHK in 1983, none of which have been marked in edict as "inappropriate".

[Belton]

The number of entries in edict may be close to EIJIRO, but the QUALITY is nowhere near comparison.

heh? EJIRO has ten times the number of entries compared to JDICT

Both EDICT and EJIRO are J to E resources. EDICT never claims to be E to J. I don't think EJIRO claims to be either. They just happen to be searchable in both directions.
Neither gives usage notes as such; why they can be frustrating for beginners. (Pretty much where I am. I think a good beginners print dictionary to be more useful if not as convenient.)

tsunbo is marked 差別語 in EJIRO. (and a search on 差別語 gives a very strange list) EJIRO seems to mark both English and Japanese words that could be offensive. However it's marked in Japanese and therefore easily overlooked by English users.

I certainly have yet to find a good E to J dictionary, electronic or print. The markets seem to be in the other direction.

(one thing that annoys me about EDICT is the same definitions for similar but different kanji with the same reading.)

But part of what you are talking about is the problem of trying to translate using a dictionary. You really need to know both languages for these nuances of meaning, and I wonder if a dictionary can really give that. Why translating's a very skilled job I suppose. And why a native teacher can be so important if they can explain these things.

Online dictionary resources are great but, myself, I'm never happy with the interface. And also I don't have always-on high speed access. So I prefer something local.

[Bueller_007]

heh? EJIRO has ten times the number of entries compared to JDICT.

Oops! I misread the original poster's quote, and because I had no idea what the actual number of entries was, I just took the mistaken quote at face value. I will point out, however, that if you include enamdict, compdict and example file entries, there are something like 800,000 entries in total. And EIJIRO includes conjugations that EDICT doesn't have. For example, they count the word 自閉症の as a separate entry, whereas EDICT usually just lists the root (自閉症) and the type of word. So the difference between the two isn't really the number of entries, it is the quality & usefulness of those entries.

Both EDICT and EJIRO are J to E resources. EDICT never claims to be E to J. I don't think EJIRO claims to be either. They just happen to be searchable in both directions.

EIJIRO is E-J all the way. "英辞郎とは、英和形式で入力されたデータベースです。" IMO, it's also much better for J-E than EDICT. EDICT is primarily a J-E dictionary, but it does have the intention of being used as E-J. This is why there are part-of-speech tags, and Jim encourages the use of tags such as "X" ("rude/x-rated"), "vulg" ("vulgar"), "col" ("colloquialism") and "sl" ("slang"). Sadly, submitters rarely, if ever, use these tags when they submit an entry.

I certainly have yet to find a good E to J dictionary, electronic or print. The markets seem to be in the other direction.

EIJIRO is the best on the market. Either that or the "Readers Plus" dictionary that is included in some of the handheld electronic dictionaries. The worst thing about EIJIRO, besides the crappy online search engine, are the English example sentences, which are often quite bizarre.

one thing that annoys me about EDICT is the same definitions for similar but different kanji with the same reading.

I agree. Again, this is part of the "primarily J-E dictionary written by English speakers" syndrome. Sometimes Japanese people make typos and select the wrong kanji. So English readers find these mistakes, assume that the kanji has been used properly, and then submit the new "alternate" meaning to EDICT.

But part of what you are talking about is the problem of trying to translate using a dictionary. You really need to know both languages for these nuances of meaning, and I wonder if a dictionary can really give that. Why translating's a very skilled job I suppose.

I think it can. Or at least it should strive to do so. EDICT contains all of the tools necessary to do this, but it falls short of the task. I think the reason for this is that it all comes down on one guy's head. And he's not a native speaker of Japanese. I think EDICT would be a vastly superior resource if he open-sourced it, or at least opened it to CVS access. But apparently, EDICT is just print-out from a database of his own design. So "CVS is not an option", I've been told.

[privard]

Just to correct a couple of things. The Eijiro package isn't E-J all the way--it actually includes two main subdictionaries, Eijiro (E-to-J) and Waeijiro (J-to-E). So it's great for J-to-E too. And it does have vastly more words than just about anything else--try looking up regional, colloquial, and technical terms in Eijiro and in other dictionaries if you don't believe that. Eijiro entries are written by and for professional translators, so they tend to be fuller and better presented than Edict entries--Edict's approach is more to provide the nearest equivalent English word than to give a full English definition. Because there's no E-to-J part of Edict, all E-to-J searches are somewhat back-engineered. That said, it's still a great resource--a lot of people with both dictionaries will look something up in Edict first, and if they don't find it or if they need more info they turn to Eijiro. Plus, by searching for words in example sentences in Eijiro, you can use to find whole phrases or sentences you want to say--while it's set up as a dictionary, there are so many sentences there you can use it as an insanely extensive phrase book as well.

One of the problems with Eijiro is that Japanese word entries for kanji-containing words are in kanji only--you can't enter hiragana to look up a Japanese word that's normally written in kanji. And, like most other dictionaries, most kanji compounds occurring within definitions don't have yomigana (hiragana to tell you how it's pronounced)--the small number that do have them ONLY in English-to-Japanese entries and not for all kanji compounds. At Japanese Language Tools, you'll find the JLT version of Eijiro, which addresses these issues by adding yomigana for virtually all kanji-containing words everywhere in Eijiro (J-to-E as well as E-to-J). In it, you can look up Japanese words by entering either kanji or kana, and you can read the Japanese words in definitions easily because the reading is right there next to every kanji word.[/url]