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+--- Thread: Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] (/thread-9072.html)
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - turvy - 2012-02-18
I am pretty sure this has been talked about before in some measure but I can't seem to find the right thread. I've heard some people supporting with passion electronic dictionaries but I always failed to ask (or get a good answer) as to why they think these are any better than online dictionaries / phone applications / etc.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - Asriel - 2012-02-18
IMO, it's simply because they're designed for that purpose. Electronic dictionaries will generally have better, faster handwriting recognition, speed, information, and portability.
For example, internet dictionaries are great, fast, have a lot of information, are copy/paste-able, but they lack portability and handwriting recognition.
A lot of dictionaries for phones will be just EDICT based, which sucks. You can also get EPWING readers, which are awesome, but on iPhone, the handwriting is only for Chinese, so some characters don't go through, and it's slower than an actual dictionary. Although I can't comment on the actual official apps like Daijisen(?) and such.
Electronic dictionaries don't have those problems because it was designed for the purpose of being a dictionary, and could avoid them. In my opinion, an EPWING reader with even semi-good handwriting recognition on a device that I already own is better than shoveling out money for another device, but that's just me.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - pm215 - 2012-02-18
Yeah, I just like the standalone simplicity of my electronic dictionary (and as it happens I don't own another portable device at that kind of form factor that could run a dictionary app). Handwriting recognition is also a critical factor.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - turvy - 2012-02-18
Why does EDICT suck?
What is EPWING?
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - SomeCallMeChris - 2012-02-18
EDICT is a volunteer-maintained list of Japanese words and their English equivalents (and not vice versa). It has very little prioritizing (although it does have a 'common word' tag, which helps some when you're overwhelmed with homonyms), it does not have examples or proper definitions (except in a few instances), it does not have an E->J layout internally and so searches that try to do E->J are universally error-prone.
It's great that this free to use enormous glossary exists (and can power things like Rikai-chan, various Anki plugins, etc.) but it's not and doesn't try to be a professionally edited dictionary or give clear definitions of words - it tries to be the most complete glossary every created. This is great when you're looking for a rare word that isn't in your regular dictionary, and not so great when you're trying to understand a subtle usage point.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - Asriel - 2012-02-18
EDICT is nice for a quick gloss over a word you don't know (ie rikaichan). It's got really short definitions that really don't tell you much detail. Plus, many definitions are user-submitted, and can't always be verified.
EDICT:
事情 - (n) circumstances; consideration; conditions; situation; reasons; (P)
If you want examples, you'll probably be getting them from the Tanaka Corpus, which has similar issues, you can look it up.
研究社 新和英大辞典 第５版：
事情 - じじょう3【事情】 (jij)
〔状況·様子〕 circumstances; conditions; 〔情勢〕 the situation; the state of affairs; 〔特別のわけ·理由·いきさつ〕 special reasons [circumstances, requirements].
... Followed by like 2 pages of professionally created examples.
EDICT isn't a horrible source by any means, but I definitely wouldn't suggest it be your only source.
EPWING is a format of professional dictionaries that they have in Japan. Most of the big dictionaries can be found in EPWING format (generally to put in as add-ons to electronic dictionaries, I think...). An EPWING reader is just a program that can you can use to search them. You can usually search multiple dictionaries at the same time.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - chamcham - 2012-02-19
My Android phone uses EDICT and I use it often to look up Japanese words.
I've had so many japanese native speakers tell me that many of the
words in EDICT were complete nonsense and don't exist.
They look baffled when I show them the search results.
A lot of the entries just don't make any sense to them,
but most language learners would never know that because
they're not native speakers.
On the other hand, they've never complained about the Daijisen/Daijirin/Kenkyuusha dictionaries on my iPad. So I guess there is a big difference in quality.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - SomeCallMeChris - 2012-02-19
Just because a native speaker doesn't recognize a word, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. EDICT contains manga terminology, slang terms from the post-war years through the present, martial-arts terms, regional dialect terms, and a variety of field-specific terms for various philosophies, religions, and sciences... well, here, let me clip from the EDICT documentation a list of tags that gives you the idea. To use EDICT effectively you need to know what these tags mean or have a program that does you the kindness of expanding them. Better yet, perhaps, filtering based on them so that you can knock out 'obscure' and 'obsolete' words from the start... then again, when I do turn away from regular dictionaries and look for things in EDICT, it's usually exactly because the word is obscure!
Field of Application
A number of entries are marked with a specific field of application. Current fields and tags are:
Buddh Buddhist term
MA martial arts term
comp computer terminology
food food term
geom geometry term
gram grammatical term
ling linguistics terminology
math mathematics
mil military
physics physics terminology
Miscellaneous Markings
X rude or X-rated term
abbr abbreviation
arch archaism
ateji ateji (phonetic) reading
chn children's language
col colloquialism
derog derogatory term
eK exclusively kanji
ek exclusively kana
fam familiar language
fem female term or language
gikun gikun (meaning) reading
hon honorific or respectful (sonkeigo) language
hum humble (kenjougo) language
iK word containing irregular kanji usage
id idiomatic expression
io irregular okurigana usage
m-sl manga slang
male male term or language
male-sl male slang
ng neuter gender
oK word containing out-dated kanji
obs obsolete term
obsc obscure term
ok out-dated or obsolete kana usage
on-mim onomatopoeic or mimetic word
poet poetical term
pol polite (teineigo) language
rare rare (now replaced by "obsc")
sens sensitive word
sl slang
uK word usually written using kanji alone
uk word usually written using kana alone
vulg vulgar expression or word
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - rich_f - 2012-02-19
Long Post-- Sorry.
I got one of the Casio EX-Word DATAPLUS electronic dictionaries (they're on version 6 now), and spent some extra money and bought the Kenkyuusha 新和英大辞典第五版 (new Japanese-English Dictionary, 5th edition).
I love the Kenkyuusha dictionary. It's just so amazingly thorough. 130,000 headwords/vocabulary entries, 100,000 compound word entries, and 250,000 example sentences/phrases.
Installing it is a bit of a pain in Windows 7, but it's doable if you download the right files form the Casio website. PM me and I'll post instructions.
The Casio also comes pre-installed with Koujien Jp-Jp, Meikyo Jp-Jp, Genius EN-JP, Progressive JP-EN (meh), and a bunch more. (Really. Lots of dictionaries. Many you'll never use. Okay, it's not perfect.)
It also comes with the NHK accent dictionary, which was another big selling point for me, so I can have words sounded out for me. I can even slow down/speed up the speaker's voice. Totally awesome.
You should be able to find them for around 27-37,000 yen.
There are other dictionaries available on other Casio CDs as well, mostly cheaper, but none as useful for me as the Kenkyuusha for finding the obscure stuff.
One annoying bit about the Casio is the sheer number of versions that Casio has for the DATAPLUS-6 line. There's a High School version, a Middle School version, a College version, a Business version, Chinese/Portugese/Russian/Etc... versions as well. I went for the Business version because it met my needs.
It's really a question of which extra dictionaries do you want, what colors do you want, and how much are you willing to spend.
Another annoying bit-- it's big (the size of a JP novel/bunko size), and it's another piece of electronics to carry around. Meh. But I love it anyway.
Of course, you can do a lot of similar things with an EPWING reader on a phone/tablet (and I have an EPWING reader on both), but I didn't have any luck finding new EPWING content in the stores when I was in Japan. (Is it on the way out? What's up with it these days?)
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - chamcham - 2012-02-19
5 years ago I'd say to go with electronic dictionaries.
But these days there are professional (Daijisen,Daijirin,Kenkyuusha) dictionaries
for iPhone and iPad. The Daijisen (JPN-JPN) dictionary allows you to handwrite kanji.
They use the SAME exact dictionary as some elctronic dictionaries. The words and
definitions are EXACTLY the same.
One big advantage electronic dictionaries have is VERY long battery life.
So if you go camping in the woods for a week, I would prefer to use an electronic dictionary.
Also, they have many specialized dictionaries, but for me I never used them much.
So iPhone/iPad dictionaries and the built-in Japanese dictionary for OSX are good enough for me at a fraction of the cost of an electronic dictionary.
Electronic Dictionary vs [Apple's J/E dictionary | Jisho | Tangorin] - turvy - 2012-02-19
Just downloaded iDict+, an EPWING reader for my iPod. It uses Apple's dictionary and Wordbank. The download page says it allows you to add your own EPWING dictionaries (which I still don't have but I guess I can download / purchase) but I can't figure out where the option to 'add' is…