Japanese Dictionaries

September 4, 2007 3:35 PM

Any recommendations for a very good Japanese or Japanese-English dictionary?

A friend wants to buy a dictionary for her daughter who is starting college. I am recommending the Compact Edition of the OED.

The daughter is all about Japan and will be spending a year there soon. Is there a Japanese or Japanese-English dictionary which is particularly exemplary? Thank you.

posted by McLir to writing & language (22 comments total)

I take private lessons and the dictionary my teacher recommended is the Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary. I brought it with me to my trip to Japan and it is lightweight and very complete.

Sometimes, when I'm stuck doing my homework, I also use this Japanese English Dictionary server.
posted by spec80 at 3:41 PM on September 4, 2007

Japan Times Dictionary of Basic Grammar and Intermediate Grammar. These are essentially a condensation of the first two years of college-level Japanese (and then some!), and make a great reference set. They're so good that if there were a third in the series I would buy it sight-unseen.

Not a dictionary, but with the internet, dictionaries aren't that useful.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:42 PM on September 4, 2007

The Kenkyusha New College Japanese-English dictionary is my friend, my lover, my companion of eight years-- compact enough to stuff in a backpack, complete enough to translate novels, with a leather cover that's incredibly sturdy and has survived eight years of my beating up on it.

(It's also much cheaper to buy in Japan than to import).

If you can afford it you will also want to consider an electronic dictionary, which is very very useful when you're sitting in class and your instructor is reeling off jargon faster than you can look it up. That's probably more convenient than a paper dictionary, and lighter, and comes with a kanji dictionary... but you know? I still treasure my Kenkyusha.
posted by Jeanne at 3:54 PM on September 4, 2007

Surely, this one is the best.
posted by TheRaven at 4:14 PM on September 4, 2007

This one's free.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:24 PM on September 4, 2007

It's difficult to say without knowing what level your friend's daughter is at. If she is fairly advanced then buying a J-J dictionary like the Kojien (my personal favorite, if I had to pick just one) might be a nice gesture.

The Kenkyusha New Japanese-English Dictionary seems to be the de facto standard J-E dictionary. I think it's the bigger sibling of the one Jeanne recommends -- definitely NOT compact enough to put in a backpack! You'd want to make sure your friend's daughter had a portable dictionary of some kind as well, if you were giving her this one.

For sheer utility, though, you can't beat an electronic dictionary. Easier to carry, quicker to use, and like Jeanne says usually comes with the added bonus of a kanji dictionary. If you go this route, I recommend making sure that the one you get includes a J-J dictionary of some kind. This will usually help cover most of the holes in the J-E dictionary, and more generally, getting used to all-Japanese reference materials will broaden her options in the long run.
posted by No-sword at 4:31 PM on September 4, 2007

How about one of these? (Complete with geek cred!)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:33 PM on September 4, 2007

I'm fond of the Kadokawa Mobile J-E Dictionary - it's pocket-sized but surprisingly complete for such a tiny package. I also second the Basic and Intermediate Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar - very handy books.
posted by wanderingmind at 4:38 PM on September 4, 2007

I bought a copy of this years ago just because it was such a neat looking book. Can't say if an expert would find it useful. You can find an updated version of it here in google books to see a sample.
posted by DarkForest at 4:44 PM on September 4, 2007

Nelson's was useful for its day but Spahn's is better. The lookup system is more regularized and lookup of compounds is much eased by duplicate entries of the each compound in all of its member kanji entries.

But I stick to my advice above . . . with popjisho and WWWJDIC, not to mention just straight search of Breen's edict.rtf, I rarely have to look up stuff in a book.

Back in the 80s I thought the wordtank was cool, but these days it's very rare for me to be both out of wifi and need to do translation at the same time.

Books are more useful for grammar explanations, that, you can't [readily] get on the internet
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 5:05 PM on September 4, 2007

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is not a good dictionary for the typical student. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, just out in a sixth edition, is a better buy. It's far more current by many thousands of entries, and excludes many nonce or archaic entries that even very few scholars will ever encounter.
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:28 PM on September 4, 2007

Kojien is the gold standard of Japanese-Japanese dictionaries. Being contrary, I prefer my Nihongo Daijiten.

For J-E, Sanseido's Concise is a very good pocket dictionary.

For the big guns, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary is the one used by J-E translators (like me), who call it "the green goddess", and is available in electronic form (in addition to dead-tree of course). That's the version I have, and as a Mac user I use JEdict as the reader—this shareware app started life as a front-end for EDICT and Kanjidic (mentioned upthread) but can also read the "EPWING" dictionary format used by the Green Goddess (and many other dictionaries on CD).

For a kanji dictionary, I'm more accustomed to Nelson's, but can recognize that the Hadamitzky & Spahn one is more useful. But an electronic kanji dictionary beats them both. I give the nod to JEDict again here.
posted by adamrice at 5:33 PM on September 4, 2007

It's always nice to have a paper dictionary to carry around (or may I suggest an electronic dictionary?), but when you are sitting at a computer, I find that nothing beats online dictionaries for vocabulary, kanji search, etc.

These three links will be more valuable than any one paper dictionary.

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC: Brilliant for readings of names (make sure to select 'the_lot' dictionary file), copy+paste-ing text straight in, and searching for kanji.

Alc E-J Dictionary: Japanese interface but easy enough to figure out, just type in a E/J word or phrase and it pops out a list of phrases and sample sentences in both languages.
(Note: the Japanese must be entered in kanji if there is one. If you don't know the kanji, look it up in the WWWJDIC and paste it in.)

Excite E-J Dic: Again, this is a Japanese resource but it's easy enough to use.
posted by QueSeraSera at 6:29 PM on September 4, 2007

If your friend is set on buying a paper dictionary, how about waiting until college classes start and getting a recommendation from the instructor?

I'm a Japanese learner turned employee at an all Japanese company by the way.
posted by QueSeraSera at 6:31 PM on September 4, 2007

Mr. Den Beste, you disappoint me after years of insightful advice. Anything with "anime" in the title is unlikely to be a worthwhile serious reference. : P

My recommendation for an online J-E dictionary is dictionary.goo.ne.jp -- it's meant for Japanese people, which means it's going to be intended for use by normal people instead of anime nerds.

I would say that the single best J-E dictionary I've ever used is the Nintendo DS software Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (漢字そのまま楽引き辞典) -- the software itself only costs $40 or $50 on eBay or wherever, and it contains the full text of some very severe real-person J-E, E-J, and J-J dictionaries. Plus a DS Lite is only $130 new. It's great because it's got handwritten kanji recognition. Very, very well designed piece of software.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:19 PM on September 4, 2007 [3 favorites]

Yeah the DS stomps all over a dedicated electronic dictionary.
posted by gomichild at 7:20 PM on September 4, 2007

Here's the answer to all your japanese learning problems.

Get a Palm Z22 (100$)
Then get these two software:
PAdict a free, dictionary with animated stroke order, 50000 words, kana and romaji input, etc.
Also you should get kingkanji simply the best flashcard software I've seen.

With this, you're carrying a very light, long lasting, japanese-english dictionary with flashcard. Plus you get the Palm stuff, like phonebook, calendar, etc.
Good luck!
posted by PowerCat at 8:51 PM on September 4, 2007

The one I linked to uses the same database as Breen does, but it has implemented a fuzzy search, which can be extremely handy.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:07 AM on September 5, 2007

What Dr Fedora and Gomichild said. The DS software is fantabulous.
posted by m3thod4 at 12:56 AM on September 5, 2007

The DS is not expandable. The Palm solution is expandable and more multi-purpose.
posted by PowerCat at 6:18 AM on September 5, 2007

I want to thank EVERYONE who has responded to this thread. Honestly, I'm amazed at the breadth and depth of the responses. I have not marked any answers yet as "best" because I am in no position to judge.

My friend is forwarding this link to her daughter for her own judgment.

But I do feel obliged to thank everyone for so much great material to work from. I did not expect this kind of response.

Kudos.
posted by McLir at 11:41 PM on September 5, 2007

nthing DoctorFedora. I bought this and it makes reading japanese blogs possible sans rikai and popjisyo etc. I can also do the same for other types of reading mediums too. My friends who paid a few hundred dollars for a wordtank will be angry :)
posted by mezamashii at 8:32 PM on September 17, 2007