Japanese-English Kindle dictionary

[Kumabjorn]

My thought precisely. I have the Android version of Eijiro and it is buckets better than Edict. Now Edict is an open source collaborate project so one of the problems is a lot (and I mean lot) of duplication, every variance of writing a word or expression is in here, ex: to bite (someone or something) is kamitsuku and in Edict you get 噛み付く　噛みつく　かみ付く　and 噛付く. It would be preferable with a heading for the word and a sub-heading with writing variations.

I am not a native Japanese speaker so for me a pop-up dictionary inside Kindle would be a godsend. I actually bought the Japanese Sony E-reader for the singular purpose of buying Japanese books and reading on it, but alas, it only came with a Eng-Eng dictionary. Another benefit for the non-native speaker is that if a word isn't in the dictionary you can start explore the possibility that it is a person or place name. These are some of the most frustrating to deal with for a non-native speaker. 毛沢東 is literally "hairy swamp east" which in japanese is pronounced Moutakutou so you start looking at maps trying to find this place. Because, obviously it doesn't make sense as anything else. Actually it does, but you need to also know Chinese, it means Mao Ze-Dong. Now, there are two hours I'll never get back.
Bu as long as the built-in pop-up dictionaries depend on space (which is why it is so hard to look up expressions) to set the delimiters, those who want a Jap-Eng dictionary will be left behind.

[karunaji]

Eijiro is for EN>JP pair which is different from Edict JP>EN. Contrary to popular opinion, dictionaries are not easily reversible.

I don't think that Eijiro database is for public use. But it would be nice to see it available for Kindle.

[Kumabjorn]

I use Eijiro a lot for looking up Japanese expressions and idioms, you get a lot better feeling for its usage due to all the translation examples.

[izakaya]

Hi karunaji!

Do you have a github page (or similar) related to developing this dictionary? I'd be really interested to see what you did to create it. There's a huge appetite for a JP->EN dictionary on the Kindle, and it would be cool if people could contribute and help improve the dictionary.

Downloading the dictionary today to try it out - thanks for your work!

[karunaji]

Hi Izakaya!

Originally Posted by izakaya

Hi karunaji!

Do you have a github page (or similar) related to developing this dictionary? I'd be really interested to see what you did to create it. There's a huge appetite for a JP->EN dictionary on the Kindle, and it would be cool if people could contribute and help improve the dictionary.

So, this surge is due to Kindle being marketed in Japan. Congratulations!

I just have a self-made script that is very crude and probably won't be of any help. If you still want to see, it is here. JP>EN is harder because Kindle does not recognize words in Asian scripts. It is not possible to do it without Amazon's help. Maybe they have already implemented it in some way in Japanese Kindles. I don't know, I haven't followed this lately.

[Kumabjorn]

The Japanese edition of the Sony PRS-T1 comes with a Jap-Jap dictionary. Its implementation is less than stellar. Sometimes it will look up only the first Kanji in a selection. It has a jump feature, but that only works when using it as a standalone application, not when used inside a book. Unlike the Kindle dictionary the dictionary pop-up only appears on the bottom of the screen, thus sometimes covering your selection and stoping you from changeing that selection. The font in the dictionary pop-up is fixed, and rather small. There have been several upgrades of the firmware, so far none of the dictionary issues has been dealt with.
Hopefully the good people at Amazon will see this as an opportunity for a competitive advantage.

[doubleRdoubleU]

Has anyone tried the steps laid out here to create a Japanese>English dictionary for the Kindle?
I've been trying to get it to work, and it seems like it should. But when I'm converting my file, my Japanese characters change into weird numbers and so the whole thing falls apart.

[Doitsu]

Looks like an encoding issue. Did you make sure that the tab delimited input file was utf8 encoded?
B̶T̶W̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶J̶a̶p̶a̶n̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶u̶p̶ ̶d̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶r̶i̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶
t̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶i̶n̶d̶l̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶g̶m̶e̶n̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶/̶l̶o̶o̶k̶u̶p̶ ̶c̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶s̶ ̶L̶a̶t̶i̶n̶ ̶1̶ ̶b̶a̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶s̶.̶

EDIT: The latest firmware update fixed this issue and Kindle Paperwhites sold in Japan come with Japanese dictionaries.

According to this post, Kindles sold in Japan come with the Progressive Eiwa Chuujiten English-to-Japanese dictionary and the (monolingual) Digital Daijisen dictionary.

[totsubo]

Now that the Kindle Paperwhite is available in Japan, with full Japanese input support, would it be possible to create 'proper' a Japanese/English dictionary?

[Kumabjorn]

It should be, the Kindle apps already have it. Well sort of, they have Jap-Jap and Eng-Jap, but with the release in Japan I would assume they will also release Jap-Eng dictionaries.

[totsubo]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

It should be, the Kindle apps already have it. Well sort of, they have Jap-Jap and Eng-Jap, but with the release in Japan I would assume they will also release Jap-Eng dictionaries.

Unfortunately Amazon does not offer a J/E dictionary at this time

I've tried the dictionary given in the link on the first post in this thread, but on my new Kindle Paperwhite it shows up under 'English' dictionaries. This means it is only available when I read English books, which is kind of pointless.

I'm guessing this is because of how the dictionary was created?

I'm happy to try and make my own if someone can point to me instructions. I only have a mac and a Linux machine available though, no windows machine.

[Kumabjorn]

There is a huge database available freely in EDICT (Monash University, Australia) that you should be able to use. There are also name dictionary available which would be a huge help when reading Japanese books.

[PharaohsVizier]

If anyone else is curious, the one single Japanese-English dictionary on the .com website is just terrible. I'm just making do with the J-J dictionary, which I guess is good for me.

[Snorkledorf]

Yeah it appears that the dictionaries on the Japanese Kindle are selected for their usefulness to Japanese speakers rather than those of us coming at it from English.

It does come with the ability to translate via Bing Translator which is...better than nothing. Trying "紳士" (shinshi) comes out as simply "Men's" which could work if you're translating a sign in a department store directing you to the men's clothing section, but fails to include its primary nuance of "gentleman." So you can already sorta kinda look up Japanese words in English.

That said, a J->E dictionary would be great!

[Kumabjorn]

Usually though there is a demand from Japanese users who want to learn English. That said, the Sony readers suffer from the same lack of dictionaries, don't know about the Kobo.