Hi

theres lots of references to ALC on these pages, i've been there and the dictionary and common expressions look really helpful, cos of the sentences...
does anyone know anything more about the expressions and sentences? Where do they come from? Are they linked to the Tanaka thing (are these the example sentences you find, e.g. on Denshi Jisho or am i thinking of something else?) Or are they made by ALC people? Are they good solid examples of real japanese expressions? (im not so worried about the translations)

Which other things in ALC have you found most useful?

Thanks

I believe the sentences on ALC comes from Tanaka corpus, which is often used on such sites. (It's used on jisho.org as well). The Tanaka corpus has been heavily criticized and the common opinion is that the sentences can be used en masse to understand certain words and expressions, but should NOT be used as a source of mining because they often sound unnatural.

Here's a site with more information about it:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/tanak...ka_warning

Excuse me for my ignorance, but what's ALC?

Ps. I thinks it's Tanaka Corpus or something like that. (those sentences that some dictionaries use that aren't recommended to use since they were written by students and have mistakes in them).

*edit* Gah, got beat to it =(

I usually prefer other sources but I'll sometimes use a sentence from the Tanaka corpus in my SRS. I only use sentences that I can understand and seem correct to me. But if I make a mistake and have one or two unnatural sentences in my deck, I don't think that's going to rot my brain.

SpaceALC sentences come from 英辞郎, a dictionary built by translators for translators.
You can read more about it here:

http://www.eijiro.jp/
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/英辞郎
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eijiro

It's a collection of bilingual phrases arranged in a dictionary-ish manner:

Authors Wrote:EIJIRO (英辞郎) is an extensive database of English-Japanese / Japanese-English translations, which was created and is owned by the Language Technology Corporation.
This database is continuously expanding, improving, and being maintained by
it and the members of the EDP (Electronic Dictionary Project) team.

For users who wish to purchase the latest version of the EIJIRO dictionary,
a downloadable site is available. Please click here for more information.

A free on-line version of EIJIRO (which is updated monthly) is also available at the following site: http://www.alc.co.jp

EDP is a group of Japanese translators. As you may already have noticed, their grasp of English is questionable, and their standards for accuracy are horrible. At least it wasn't something you could call a dictionary when I found it a few years ago. It was notorious for a plethora of errors and inappropriate sentences among learners of English in Japan. They frequently update the online version so its accuracy might have improved, but it doesn't seem to be the most reliable dictionary and I can't recommend it. I know it's a huge pile of bilingual sentences and some learners of Japanese find it useful. But if I were you, I'd stay clear of the pseudo-dictionary. The latest version might be much better than older versions, and it could be helpful if used correctly. But don't forget it was horrendous. Probably it still contains many errors.

I probably use it more than any other source, for over a year now. I've never found anything in it that looked blatantly wrong.
I frequently use phrases from it when writing emails to Japanese people, and they complement me on my great mastery of Japanese :p

Zarxrax Wrote:I probably use it more than any other source, for over a year now. I've never found anything in it that looked blatantly wrong.
I frequently use phrases from it when writing emails to Japanese people, and they complement me on my great mastery of Japanese :p

So you don't know Reuteirs Japan has messed up a Japanese translation of its article thanks to 英辞郎; the translator just believed it...

If your goal is to be good enough to be complemented, then any online dictionary would be ok, I guess. But if you want to be indistinguishable from native speakers or better than the average Japanese guy, I don't recommend it.

Anyway, I just checked if it's got better and found this:

W: First of all, I belong to a coven of witches, and my sister...（まず、私は魔女集会に参加してるんですけど、私の妹は…。）

T: W-W-Wait a second! You're a witch? For real?（ちょっと待ってください。あなたは魔女なんですか。本物の？）

W: I sure am.（本物よ。）

I'm guessing "For real?" would be "本当に？" in this context because what T is saying here is basically "Are you serious?" or "Seriously?" Or is 英辞郎 right and T is asking if W is a "real" witch?

Edit: Forgot to mention 魔女集会に参加してるんですけど is a mistranslation. I think what W is saying is "I am a member of a group of witches," not "I attend a meeting of witches." If I am right, it should read 私は魔女の一員なんですけど.

Sounds like you're splitting hairs. If you need it to be THAT accurate maybe it's not the dictionary for you. I don't have a problem with something like that though, as they both seem to mean pretty much the same thing to me.

Zarxrax Wrote:Sounds like you're splitting hairs. If you need it to be THAT accurate maybe it's not the dictionary for you. I don't have a problem with something like that though, as they both seem to mean pretty much the same thing to me.

It sounds to me like you're not splitting hairs. There's not a big difference between "I belong to a shodo club" and "I attend shodo meetings" but they are different ideas in English.

magamo Wrote:If your goal is to be good enough to be complemented, then any online dictionary would be ok, I guess. But if you want to be indistinguishable from native speakers or better than the average Japanese guy, I don't recommend it.

Magamo, is the Japanese an incorrect translation? Or is it incorrect Japanese. I think most of us are more worried about incorrect Japanese than incorrect translation. Studying from enough sources would correct the second problem, but inputting bad Japanese in the first place is another.

Zarxrax Wrote:Sounds like you're splitting hairs. If you need it to be THAT accurate maybe it's not the dictionary for you. I don't have a problem with something like that though, as they both seem to mean pretty much the same thing to me.

Reuteirs Japan's translation said the US ok'd fishing セミクジラ, an endangered species. I don't think it'd fall into the category of "same difference." But you might have a different opinion.

魔女集会に参加してるんですけど is like a typical mistranslation you can find in a QUALITY speedsub. If you don't mind it, it's totally cool. It's just the kind of error a reliable dictionary would never ever make. You might want to be a little more careful though because it's just a coincidence the meanings of the two sentences are similar. The same kind of error can lead to a totally screwed interpretation.

Also, 本物の and 本当に are quite different in Japanese, though "for real" partly covers both meanings. Again, if you don't need to differentiate them, a decent dictionary is definitely overkill.

Edit:

welldone101 Wrote:Magamo, is the Japanese an incorrect translation? Or is it incorrect Japanese. I think most of us are more worried about incorrect Japanese than incorrect translation. Studying from enough sources would correct the second problem, but inputting bad Japanese in the first place is another.

Reuteirs Japan's mistranslation was in good grammar with a messed up meaning. I don't know if this is the kind of incorrect Japanese you think can be easily corrected.

Apparently phrases containing technical terms in 英辞郎 are not reviewed by people in the know, so sometimes example sentences/translations are simply wrong or sound as if the author doesn't know what he's talking about, though grammar is ok (I guess the authors didn't bother to consult experts). The latest version might be free of these notorious errors if they employed experts on various fields.

As for Japanese grammar in the dictionary, it's poor when compared with a real dictionary for obvious reasons; translators are not linguists. But then again, they're all written by native speakers, so you could say it's acceptable. It's just it looks as if college students wrote some entries, which is probably true.

I think it's a good resource if used as a huge bilingual text, but if the word "dictionary" has a connotation of "authority," I don't think 英辞郎 is a dictionary.

So then if Eijiro is such an awful dictionary then what do you suggest in place of it? I find that sometimes it's the only place that has some of the words I'm looking for. It's especially handy for names of places and people.

To clarify for the person who asked the question, ALC licenses the Eijiro dictionary for use on the SpaceALC website. It is separate from the ALC language books. Eijiro is not related to ALC or Tanaka Corpus.

The Tanaka corpus is an older public domain set of sentences that has since kind of been made less useful by better example sentence material. It's accuracy is alright. It's just that the phrasings might not be quite natural. Because Tanaka corpus is free, it's used by a lot of dictionary companies.

Well, it is very hard to be an authority when you are talking about a natural language.
I can find dozen of mistakes in portuguese<->portuguese dictionaries in a very short time. But I still recur to these dictionaries when I need help to find a word.
I've been using 大辞林 and 大辞泉 for 1 year and I've seen many incorrect sentences in both dictionaries, but they are still the best dictionaries I could find and I'm very fond on them.
The problem here is to stick to only one source. You always need to check your information from more than one source, besides that, you must also consult your own reason. If you do that, even edict can be a good source.

erlog Wrote:So then if Eijiro is such an awful dictionary then what do you suggest in place of it? I find that sometimes it's the only place that has some of the words I'm looking for. It's especially handy for names of places and people.

Dictionaries and encyclopedias are two different things. Traditional dictionaries deliberately avoids defining certain proper nouns, that is, dictionaries are not supposed to look up names of places and people in the first place.

If you're looking for good monolingual/bilingual "dictionaries," I posted some recommendations here and here.

Slangy words are often found in this free online dic: 日本語俗語辞書. I'm sure there are a few more online slang dics, but I can't remember the urls because I don't need them...

If you need something for names of places and people, you might want to get some encyclopedia. If you don't mind some errors, obviously Wikipedia is a good free resource, though it's monolingual.

Like I said, Eijiro could be useful for some purposes, though it's awful when you see it as a "dictionary." As I already said, it's a pile of "translations." Hence a lot of sentences are not the most idiomatic. Also, it seems their standards for accuracy are too low for a dictionary. It's a bunch of translations, which of course you can make use of. But OP asked if they're good solid examples of real Japanese expressions, and I don't think so.