Slashdot Mirror
Useful English-Japanese Handheld Dictionaries?
srothroc asks: "I've been interested in finding one of these, but I'm not too sure where to start looking. I've been around the block talking to students and my professor - most people either don't need one for some reason or the other or only use paper dictionaries. Online searches have been fruitless as well, so I turn to you, Slashdot. The ideal dictionary would be able to take hiragana/katakana input and give output in English, hiragana, katakana, and/or kanji. A lot of the ones that I've seen take English (romaji) input and spit out the same - not something I'd need. I would prefer options that wouldn't bust my wallet, as Christmas season is coming around. Any ideas, folks?"
Just about any electronics store or office supply store has these electronic dictionaires lined up out in front.
I have been pwned because my
Get a Zaurus SL-C760.
(Or if you're technical, you can hack the dictionary software onto a Zaurus SL-C700, as I have.)
The built-in "denki jisho" (electronic dictionary) has four dictionaries: Japanese-to-Japanese (completely useless to me); Japanese-to-English (which takes input in hiragana, katakana, or kanji -- but not romaji); English-to-Japanese (almost completely useless to me, except I can copy the definition into a HancomWord doc or something and paste each individual kanji back into the dictionary going the other way); and Katakana to whatever (so you can tell that 'depaato' means department store, etc.)
Zauruses have excellent kanji handwriting recognition too, so you can just sketch out the character combination you're asking about and it reads it. Even if you make mistakes -- which is pretty impressive.
I hear the SL-C8-something (860?) is the same hardware as the C760 but with extra full-sentence-translation software. That software will probably soon be working on the C700 also.
A Japanese friend at the university has one of the higher-end standalone dictionaries. I don't know who makes hers, but on any search hers seems to have nearly double the definitions and meanings that mine does, or has many obscure words that mine doesn't have.
Expensive, but recommended.
Here's a pretty popular web based dictionary. I used it for a while but became dissatisfied with the interface. The dictionaries it uses are avaible and pretty much free to use as you wish. I wrote my own front end for the dictionaries in a weekend and I am very happy with how much more useful it is.
Just buy a cheap PDA, either Palm or Pocket PC, and install dictionary software on it. For Palm you can get the shareware KDIC. It gives you more flexibility and choices than a dedicated dictionary.
... is to forget about the gizmos and just take a crash course in learning the language. But taking a class can be expensive and boring. That's why you want to spend time watching hentai instead. Most of them have handy subtitles on the screen so you can match the words with what's being said. You'll learn all sorts of handy Japanese phrases that will help you in everyday life such as:
and so on. Trust me, a few hours spent boning-up, I mean, studying-up on the Japanese language using these video materials and you'll impress everyone you meet!
Hope this helps,
GMD
watch this
To get a really good Japanese dictionary, you're probably going to have to go to Japan. Fortunately, there are importers such as J-List which will happily provide you with such things.
It isn't exactly what you are looking for but you might find this interesting. Ectaco have lots of useful traslation programs. Hope that helps.
Taking your good advice, i recommend anyone wanting to pick up japanese girls to try this on them, yes, just walk up to any random female on the street and say:
... this is a real chick magnet!
annata wa manko misete kudasai
I never have owned such a devices, but I'm a native English speaker and spent 4 years in Japan.
Of the handful of E-Japanese/English dictionaries that I've seen friends using and/or in stores, the Canon Wordtank seemed to rise above the rest in my rusty recollection.
Fanatic's site:
http://www.wordtankcentral.com/
Ebay - Canon Wordtank
Ganbatte ne!!
Either you haven't given sufficient information on your needs here, or you haven't given sufficient THOUGHT to your needs here. You give vague guidelines for what you're seeking, like for example, you want to input kana and have it output kanji. You must be a beginner, because you don't seem to realize there is no one-to-one correspondence between words written in kana and kanji. For example, when I write the kana "seikou," do I want the kanji meaning sex, a political platform, success, or any of a dozen other homonyms? A dictionary is not a mindreader, it doesn't know what you want, you can only get out of it what you know how to get out of it.
So what I'm getting at is, dictionary needs are different for beginners than for advanced students. A beginner who isn't skilled at writing kanji will not get along with a Zaurus, an advanced student will be frustrated with a WordTank model that would satisfy a beginner.
I usually tell beginners to buy a Wordtank, and advanced students to get a Zaurus. But no electronic dictionary is a substitute for a paper dictionary. I use my Zaurus mostly when writing, to doublecheck the kanji when I know the reading. I use my Zaurus mostly when reading, to quickly look up an unknown kanji for the reading & definition. But I usually end up using the electronic lookup as the entry point for the huge 2100 page Kenkyusha New JE Dictionary, on paper. If I want more specialized data like etymology, I pop in my Kojien CD. If I want classical Japanese lookups, I use a paper kogojiten (haven't found a good electronic kogojiten yet).
But I have found that I use my portable dictionaries less and less. Free online dicts like WWWJDIC and the goo.ne.jp dictionary have made portable devices less useful to me.
Ultimately, portable dictionaries are a crutch. I often think of a news story I saw with someone demonstrating an electronic "speaking translator" in Spanish. It could say basic phrases like "Can you direct me to a nearby taxi stand?" They used this device, and that exact phrase, on a Spanish-speaker, who immediately understood the tinny little voice, and shot back a rapid fire answer, in Spanish of course. Which was completely incomprehensible to the person with the device. The answer would have to be given back through the device, the person giving the answer would have needed to learn how to input his answer and spit it back out through the device.
So what I'm basically trying to tell you is that electronic dictionaries are not going to do much good for beginners, they're more useful for advanced students who really don't have that much need for dictionaries generally. Even some of the basic skills needed to effectively search for words are beyond most beginners, I know I wasn't taught how to use a paper dictionary until I was in 2nd year classes. So save your money for good TEXTBOOKS, you'll learn to speak Japanese without having to consult a dictionary every two words.
i went looking around on PalmGear and eventually found copies of Hanabi (a great non-free flash-card kanji/kana learning system for Palms) and Dokusha (a quite comprehensive free(?) dictionary and word processor also for Palms) that turned out to be exactly what i personally needed. only problem with Dokusha is that it takes up over 6MB for the main dictionary and Kanji dictionaries, and IIRC, occupies about 12MB when you include the name dictionaries.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
can be obtained here. They have multiple advantages, they're more pleasurable to hold in your hands than electronic devices, they know ALL the words, and the batteries never run out. On the down side, the batteries never run out, even when you wish they WOULD, maintenance costs are extremely high, and after a few years of use, you'll lose interest in speaking Japanese ever again.
The phrase "We need a raise in Valkurm Dunes. J-6"
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
You can find them at your local burusera.
The latest Slashdot meme.
I have a Japanese Palm m505 which I picked up used in Tokyo. As a dictionary, it rules. One of the things on the CD that came with it was a nice, handy Japanese-English dictionary--it does J->E and E->J lookup, and lets you look up a kanji by a clever dictionary-switching interface.
The Palm lets you write Japanese in romaji (which is way more confusing than you'd think), or, alternately, it has a program called, "Rakuhira", which lets you write in hiragana in the Graffiti area, the way Kami-sama intended.
Plus, you can play Bejeweled on it.
Japanese-English dictionaries are all designed for Japanese people, as they massively outnumber English speakers trying to learn Japanese. As such, the dictionaries assume that you know kanji. This is problem number 1.
So, you type in an English word, and you mostly get kanji in return. Some of the Canon wordtank models give you a list of search "hits" in hiragana/katakana, but then once you choose your hit, it takes you to the word definition page, and you're all in kanji again.
But, most models have a "jump" feature, that lets you select some kanji, and then "jump" to the hiragana reading, or even to an English definition. It's kinda circular, and not very convenient, but you can manage to get from English to Japanese this way.
As for entering hiragana, most Japanese people use romaji, even for typing Japanese.
Sounds like you want one that is aimed at japanese speakers.. or, well, people that can read hiragana and katakana.. so, you want one aimed at a Japanese market.
Seiko makes a number of models, which rage from around $170 (USD) to $285. Check out the Seiko JP-Dict website for more info.
As for places to purchase in the US, I found an ad in "US Frontline" (a US magazine for Japanese expats) about "Bargain Japan", which appears to be a reseller of Japanese products in the US, and is a subsidiary of Frontline. They have handheld dictionaries here.
I havn't used one of these yet.. so I can't comment.. but hope this helps.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I usually tell beginners to buy a Wordtank, and advanced students to get a Zaurus.
In what ways is the Zaurus better for advanced students than the WordTank? (I've never used a Japanese Zaurus, so I'm not arguing, I'm asking.)
I rarely have trouble with stroke order, BTW, but I still frequently need to look up Japanese words and kanji or find a good translation for an English word. The easier and faster, and the more info, hypertexting between dictionaries, examples, jukugo, furigana, etc., the better.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I have a similar problem - Trying to get an English to Pinyin electronic dictionary. All my Chinese students have electronic dictionaries, but none that I have seen can translate directly from English to Pinyin, enabling me to say something useful in China. If I could read chinese characters I wouldn't need the dictionary!
Has anybody seen a suitable one?
If (by some strange coincidence) you're running a windows CE-based palm, you could give JWPce a shot - it is written more as a word processor, but it has kanji lookups and a pretty decent dictionary. It's GPL and will also run on regular windows if you want to give it a quick run-by.
Not really on topic, but Linux (and other free Unix-like systems) users learning Japanese I recommend
gjiten + kanjipad + im-ja for a good dictionary system (you just have to convert Jim's dictionary files to UTF-8, iconv(1) is your friend).
What other Japanese-related software slashdotters like?
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
Canon has more than a decade of history providing Denki Jisho to the Japanese market.
I taught myself Japanese in the navy, on a ship homeported there, and learned stroke order from a couple of cheap books. Once you get the general idea, the rest follow. If it took you until 4th year of university, you must be relying on memory alone, and not doing a very good job of it. It's just a matter of learning some basic tricks they use, like why guchi is three strokes instead of four, the general flow. That will get you 99% of the stroke order within a few days.
Infuriate left and right
Simple question, simple answer. Get a Canon Wordtank.
The Wordtank models are single purpose (unlike a PDA) and do the job they were built for well. Look up Japanese (kana and kanji) from English, English/Kanji from kana. Menus are available in English. I used a Wordtank constantly for the first 3-4 years of Japanese study. The Wordtank dictionaries have probably improved, but I never trusted the definitions in the Wordtank as being more than a best estimate. You will end up using a paper dictionary in conjunction with the Wordtank, but nobody wants to carry around a bulky dictionary all the time.
I am no longer current on the Wordtank models, but this website should provide you with enough information to make that decision on your own. Avoid romaji based dictionaries (they will stunt your learning) or ones targeted at the Japanese market (by the time you have the skill to use one, you won't be asking Slashdot for help in choosing).
Two recommendations for online dictionaries:
Jeffrey's Japanese-English Dictionary Server
Space ALC
Good luck with your studies. It will enrich your life in many ways.
I've taken three years of Japanese lessons at my (public) high school in Fort Worth, Texas. As you might expect from a Texas school, the class was very barebones. Our teacher had lived in Japan for four years as part of a military family, but her immersion classes hardly brought her close to fluency. But it was filled with eager students, so we've done alright. What I have done to learn Kanji, aside from my textbook and trusty pocket dictionary, is to find native Japanese speakers to help me out. I'm active in my city's local branch of Sister Cities International, and one of our cities is in Niigata, Japan. When we get potential visitors, they call my household and ask if we'd like to host a student or two. This way they get a free place to stay, and I can bug them about Japanese language. If something like this isn't possible, then you could find someone in your local that speaks it, either through a club, or maybe a restaurant and ask them if they can help teach you. This last summer I spent ten days in Japan, and in those ten days I learned 10 times as much as i learned in three years of a classroom.
With so many people talking about learning Japanese here, can we get some pointers where to start? Mostly, I'd want to be able to read techinical documents [servicing imported machines for work..oh and add german too. ha, ha], websites, and of course [and most importantly] to understand enough japanese so I can watch the unedited import anime!
thanks!
I work with a Japanese woman who came here to the US, and one of the first conversations we had was about how she boned up on English before coming here. Coming from that tech savvy island, she had alot of gadgets to choose from and tried quite a few. In the end, though, she chose one and I still see her refer to it alot. What is it, you ask? Webster's Japanese-English Paperback Translator. Yes, thats right, from someone who knows someone who has gone through the trials of this very problem, the best handheld device is indeed a book.
---Excuse the bad English, I'm American---
My Japanese textbook, Nakama 1, has a companion site provided by the publisher and authors, with some small additions made by Japanese lecturers at American universities. One of the resources that I initially thought would be useless was the spreadsheet-based dictionaries (first year, second year). These have proven quite valuable, especially since you can use Excel with the Office Japanese IME (offered for free from MS) to search the text in English or Japanese.
1) Memorize the kana symbols (both hiragana and katakana, there are roughly 100 of each but they're paired, hiragana is used for Japenese words, katakana used for borrowed words). Look around the bookstores for elementary level books (Jimi's book of Japanese, etc.). If you know your kana and their pronunciations, you've got a shot at getting started.
2) After that you're going to have to start learning grammer and memorizing kanji. This is where the hobby starts to get expensive... dictionaries can be $50+, learning software and audio tapes are typically pricey, college courses are never cheap. I probably have $300 worth of materials on my shelf and I'm only a beginner.
For simple word lookups, I currently use my Basic Japenese-English Dictionary $19 (ISBN: 0-19-864328-4). All the entries are indexed in romanized style which makes it possible to find words you've only heard.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
On my Japanese-model Clie, the following applications make an excellent solution.
KDIC)
Shareware dictionary front-end.
WWWJDIC
Free Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionaries
Radic
Look up kanjis by radical, for when you don't know the pronunciation.
PocketKanji
Draw simpler kanjis in a box and have them recognized.
All of these together make for a pretty great and complete solution whenever I am reading or writing Japanese.
It boggles my mind that people are saying "you should learn the language instead of using a dictionary". One of the best ways to learn a language is by reading, and no matter how many hours you spend in a classroom, you WILL eventually run into a word you don't know and can't intuit.
Kind of a seaweed bright rice bucket climbing arduously gardening implement - old horse-like crysanthemum blinking honored grandmother coming back returning never.
I've been interested in finding one of these,
One of what?
Have you read my journal today?
I have been studying japanese for about 5 years. I first bought an old Canon Wordtank(IDX-9600) in Den Den Mura (osaka's version of akihabara), and it served me well for my first year or two of study. Then it simply couldnt keep up. Word and Meaning only dictionaries arent great if you want to really learn a language. Some of the recently new dictionaries ($350+) range have awesome dictionaries, various word lookups methods, and great explanations/examples (in japanese/english), a thesaurus, and more, which are all extremely helpful. The 9600 has some explanations, but its poor in comparison to the newer models, like the IDF-4600 , at 45,000yen.
Another alternative is JWPce. I've been using it for about 4-5 years now and its a great quick desktop japanese dictionary. Its real basis is the word processor, which i rarely use, but the dictionary is quick and easy. It runs on a PocketPC as well. I got in the habit of using it before translation sites on the web became popular, so they might be of good use as well. WWWJDIC is very good.
There is a big catch to comparing the 9600 with some of the newer models (most available only in japan), that for a beginner, good luck using it. They are not meant for an int'l user, and are mostly in japanese. Menu's, explanations, etc are mostly in japanese. Once you get to 3rd year or so, you would probably do fine.
But the question of paper vs. electronic dictionary? I dont think you realize how time consuming large paper kanji dictionaries are. And wait til you are translating a 20,000 character essay. There will be kanji you dont know, and it will take hours and hours. Electronic lookup is your best hope.
Suggested Solution: Start off with a cheap Wordtank 9600 (or the like) and JWPce and websites. If you are always in front of a computer somewhere, you dont need to pocket dictionary. If you are travelling through japan, or are not often able to access the internet when you need to lookup something, its worth it. But for your first couple years, basic kanji lookup and word definitions is all you need to know. If you are still studying japanese in 3+ years, you will want/need an upgrade... especially if you travel there. By then, the IDF-4600 will be old and outdated, and you'll want whatever is the newest model.
Good luck learning japanese. If you are in the US, and you want to "touch-and-feel" good japanese dictionaries and cant get to japan, check if you live near a mitsuwa store, which is a huge japanese grocery store. There is usually a japanese only bookstore adjacent to it, which will have some dictionaries to look at. Expect high prices though.
As others have noted, online dictionaries are much harder to use for offline text if you don't know how to input the kanji (keyboard kanji input systems are phonetic, which assumes you already know the pronounciation of the word you want). The Tejina handwriting pad popup is a start that may help the first years after you've learned stroke order principles; once you get it to recognize some kanji you can paste them to a word dictionary (the Tejina dictionary only has info on individual kanji characters).