Hi all, I just registered. You certainly seem to be the best informed group I've come across for learning resources

I'm currently studying JLPT 2 in London and have lessons each week with my Skype teacher in Japan who's great by the way. I've been reading the various posts on iPhone dictionaries and flash cards having just switched from my Zaurus where I was using the EPWING dictionary reader Zten.

Seems like iDic is the only EPWING dictionary reader available on iPhone, I bought it but it constantly crashes on my iPhone which is Jailbroken to OS 3.0, it crashes even before I install 3rd party dictionaries so its clearly incompatible. Has anyone got these working together? I've mailed the developer in Japanese twice but had no response. Incidentally all the docs I saw before purchase said OS 2.x upwards, slightly misleading if it doesn't work on OS 3.0, I'm looking at you Apple.

For now I'm using Kotoba and Denshi Jisho over wifi for dictionaries and I'm just about to install Anki which seems really popular for flash cards.

Cheers all.

http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~h_ishida/EBPocke...index.html

There is a free version of ebpocket that has been developed for the ipod touch/iphone.

but... but... I searched everywhere for an EPWING dictionary reader and couldn't find any other than iDic and I think weDict too. I remember uninstalling weDict pretty quickly, I think it was romaji only or something.

That's very interesting, I'll give EBPocket a trial run today or tomorrow and post back, I'm just getting my head around ANKI on my desktop at the moment which I love so far, I'm going to try getting ANKImini on my iPhone tonight.

If you're just looking for a good dictionary in general, the famous Green Goddess dictionary (Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary) is available on the iphone/ipod touch (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSto...52561&mt=8). It's a little pricey but when compared to the normal cost of that dictionary it's pretty cheap.

Thanks for the tip, I noticed it was highly regarded along with a few others and bookmarked the thread.

Jarvik7 Wrote:My favorites are 研究社新和英大辞典(aka green goddess)+英辞典郎+EDICT (in that order) for when I translate, and 大辞林＋広辞苑+学研漢和大辞典(it's better than 漢字源) for when I study.

I've only used Edict, Kanjidict and the edict examples dictionaries up to now, there's not much that I can't find in there but at JLPT 2 I'm not sure whether I would be better off swapping to one of the paid for dictionaries above. Do Green Goddess and Wisdom et al have better functionality in their standalone iPhone dictionaries or would you be better off with an EPWING format in a viewer if you're not a native speaker?

Maybe I should look for a "demo" version floating around the net and then I can try it and buy the one I want, I don't have any problem paying for something I'm going to use. I paid for that "Japanese" Edict dictionary and don't use it at all, I'd like a refund on that one

I'd go with an EPWING version if you were only going to buy one. The interface is nicer on the native iphone clients, but with an EPWING you could use it on your computer as well.

At JLPT2 level I'd definitely recommend abandoning EDICT etc for something better (green goddess).

re:iDic crashes..

There is a beta version that works on 3.0. You can download it from his webpage (but you'll need to send him some info about your ipod/iphone first so he can give you a beta key).

Wow, this forum is really helpful, glad I found it. Well I am an interface designer so a nice interface is really important to me. This has given me lots to do, I'll finish setting up Anki first, I don't think I'll bother with JapaneseFlip or KanjiFlip, too limited.

I'll take a proper look at Green Goddess and the EBPocket viewer and try the iDic developer again for that beta (third time lucky), maybe I'll get my Japanese teacher to mail him, he might be more responsive to a request from a native. Thanks everyone.

chameleoncoder Wrote:If you're just looking for a good dictionary in general, the famous Green Goddess dictionary (Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary) is available on the iphone/ipod touch (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSto...52561&mt=8). It's a little pricey but when compared to the normal cost of that dictionary it's pretty cheap.

It's cheaper than normal because it isn't the same dictionary. I think that's their New College Intermediate dictionary set.

The iPhone versions of Kenkyūsha's big daddy line can be found here, in all of their exorbitantly expensive glory:

New Japanese-English Dictionary

New English-Japanese Dictionary

*sigh* If only there were a way to make my epwing versions look as nice on the iphone as the native apps. I just can't justify spending that much money on a shiny interface, though.

cough splutter, reaches for pills. Ahem, now that is a bit pricey :o

About the same price as the PC version: http://www.amazon.co.jp/ロゴヴィスタ-研究社-新和英大辞...B000A17CNM

and much cheaper than the tree version: http://www.amazon.co.jp/新和英大辞典-第5版-―-並装-...263&sr=1-1

I used the tree version at my university library, it is in two volumes, has small print, and weighs several kilograms. THAT is why dead tree dictionaries are borderline useless. Every good dictionary is just way too large to be practical in physical form.

Just a quick post to say I received a mail from the iDic developer to say he's submitted an OS 3.0 compatible version to Apple and he's just waiting for them to put it in the store, should take a few days only. Great news.

I'm just getting used to AnkiMini. I see you have to run it in your browser at the moment if you're on iPhone OS 3.0. Install via Cydia (if you're jailbroken) then type:

http://localhost:8000/

It won't work if you try and launch it from the icon as expected. Otherwise it works pretty well. I was a bit disappointed with the interface at first but after some customization I've got it looking a bit better and I can live with it. If you're on the Mac iFlash looks a bit more presentable but I have to say Anki is extremely powerful, it just looks a bit rough around the edges.

I'll check out those dictionaries next...

HI edwinbradford
I have a 3gs iphone...well I installed EBPocket pro but I don't know how to install others dictionaries,I used disk aid for transfer the files but then when I insert the location in the software nothing happend...Mine is not Jailbroken
How can I install others dictionaries?

Hi,

I haven't tried it yet, I'm in the middle of porting all my Zaurus vocabulary lists to Anki. However I did a quick search and it looks similar to iDic. This is the page that describes how to set the EBPocket dictionaries up in japanese, if you can't translate it then it will be very similar to this process for iDic.

I suggest downloading filezilla as they suggest and transferring the dictionaries via FTP. If you haven't used EPWING before, then remember that the files must be inside the proper folder structure, you transfer the whole folder structure, not any single file.

Hope that helps.

I resolved with FileZilla thx for the tip

The new OS 3.0 version of iDic is in the store, I downloaded it last night. I have to say I wasn't overwhelmed with it, I'm comparing it to my EPWING reader on my Zaurus. It still crashes once in a while and I don't like the order of the returned results. いく for example came back with いく at the top and then some compounds and then 行く right down the page. The display of Kanjidict results and examples was pretty poor and there were other problems too, I don't know whether they're bugs or designed that way. I got so frustrated I uninstalled it.

I tried the free version of EBPocket, it had less functionality although the paid for version corrects most of that, it seemed faster and was certainly completely stable but overall it was a bit average.

I think I'm going to go with either Green Goddess or the Wisdom. Incidentally has anyone seen the 大辞林 iPhone demos on YouTube? It looks amazing but I don't know anything about the dictionary.

I've been googling iPhone dictionaries all day today. I found a new one called wishoTouch and a whole load of dictionaries from a Japanese company called KGC which all seem to run through some super fast EPWING reading engine called ONESWING.

The wishoTouch one is just another Edict front end unfortunately although it looks really nice, way too expensive just for Edict. The KGC ones look really good but I'm having some trouble understanding their range. There are some youtube videos here, but I think that's their flagship expensive dictionary they're showing which has several dictionaries in one? Looks impressive though.

Their page in iTunes has the dictionaries for sale individually but I'm not sure whether you're buying a stand alone dictionary with the same interface or just EPWING data and of course stupid iTunes won't let you cut and paste the text so I can't run Rikaichan over it.