3.1 Notes on the Study of Japanese for Sinologists
Outline
3.1.1 工欲善其事，必先利其器 (Tools)
3.1.2 與其給魚，不如給魚竿 (Questions about Tools)Last update: 12 March 2010
3.1.1 工欲善其事，必先利其器 (Tools)
A list of useful tools. Today there are many time-saving tools that are Internet-based or software applications. If you use print-based materials, sometimes you will waste a lot of time.
1. Internet-Based
1.1 Dictionaries
1.1.1 www.jisho.org
Good for inputing using romaji; good to find character based on radicals.
1.1.2 http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C
Large collection of words, but many results are too broad. Also, you have to specify whether you are searching by romaji or by other characters, so sometimes you inconveniently have to toggle between different search settings.
It seems this dictionary is a wiki, meaning you can add entries, so that accounts for the large size and variable quality of entries. You can also use this website to see the pronounciations of words—just paste in a bunch of japanese, and it gives you, word-by-word, the pronunciation and English definitions. (To do this, select the “Translation” tab at top.)
1.1.3 http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/The dictionary for Yahoo! in Japan, with several settings.
1.2 Rikaichan (Web-based translation application)
1.2.1 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2471
Basic description of this wonderful add-on tool for the Mozilla Firefox browser.
1.2.2 http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/
Place to download Rikaichan.
You can have this activated while you look in dictionaries, and this will give you another option for translation.
1.3 Character translation
1.3.1 http://www.excite.co.jp/world/chinese/
I use this to translate Chinese characters into Japanese-encoded ones, then plug the Japanese characters into software applications that require Japanese encoding. Take care to specify whether you are inputting in simplified or traditional characters. This can also be useful in cases in which the Japanese characters are slightly different from the Chinese characters, such that you cannot use Chinese characters to search on a Japanese-language website. Unfortunately, sometimes this website actually translates the characters into different characters instead of just changing the encoding (it is, after all, supposed to be a translation tool). I’m wondering if I can find a better method to type something in Chinese and then change that into the equivalent in Japanese encoding.1.3.2 Jinshan Ciba
1.4 Grammar help
1.4.1 http://www.timwerx.net/language/jpadj/index.htm
This one is on adjectives; has another one on verbs.
1.4.2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_grammar
A good, concise review of Japanese grammar, pulling things together that were not made clear in my two years of “just learn by doing” classes.
1.5 Media Outlets
1.5.1 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/stream/index.htm
News, both text and video.
1.6 JapanKnowledge
http://lib.berkeley.edu/EAL/resources/japanese.html Restricted to UCB, UCI, UCLA, UCSD
Electronic database with dictionaries, encyclopedias available.1.7 CINII
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/en
Large database of academic articles in many fields. Many articles are available as PDF files.
2.0 Software
2.1 Dr. Eye (Japanese/Traditional Chinese translation software)
Can translate from Word and text PDF files, something that Rikaichan does not do. But it translates from Japanese into Chinese, not Japanese into English.
3.0 Hardware
3.1 electronic dictionaries
http://www.nipponimports.com/Japanese_Electronic_dictionary_review.php
Reviews of electronic dictionaries. There's another review here: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html.
4.0 Print-Based
4.1 Dictionary of Japanese Particles (1999, Sue A. Kawashima)
4.2 Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (1986, Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui)
4.3 Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar (1995, Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui). It would be more user-friendly if this dictionary and the above were combined into one larger, hardback dictionary. As it is now, you sometimes have to look up a term in both dictionaries to find it. These small paperback dictionaries are not exactly cheap: $45 each when I bought them in 2007 and 2008.
4.4 Japanese Grammar (2000, Keiko Uesawa Chevray and Tomiko Kuwahira. A Schaum’s Outlines book.). This contains elementary Japanese grammar along with exercises and answer keys. Unlike in many textbooks, with their nonexistent or lousy indexes, here you can actually find things easily. Romaji script appears consistently along with script in mixed kanji and kana.
4.5 A History of Writing in Japan (1991, Christopher Seeley). Useful for seeing development and different strata of Japanese.
4.6 Making Sense of Japanese Grammar (2002, Zeljko Cipris and Shoko Hamano). Sixty-six useful hints for clarifying aspects of Japanese grammar: patterns that help memorization, discussion of disanalogies with English grammar, etc.
4.7 Handbook of Japanese Grammar (1994, Masahiro Tanimori). Largely duplicates what is done better in the three-volume series of dictionaries by Makino et al, but there are some additional patterns listed, in the same format (alphabetical order by romaji).
4.8 An Historical Grammar of Japanese (1928, G B Sansom). A dated grammar of Japanese, but useful for the historical depth of its explanation and for understanding pre-war Japanese.
4.9 An Introduction to Written Japanese (1963, O’Neill and Yanada). Useful for translation exercises in the back: passages in Japanese with English translations included.
4.10 Fundamentals of Japanese Grammar (2008, Yuki Johnson). Modern, comprehensive overview of standard Japanese of today.
4.11 A Programmed Introduction to Literary-Style Japanese (1968, P G O’Neill). A workbook with short exercises for reading prewar-style Japanese.
4.12 The Japanese Language (1967, Roy Andrew Miller). Analysis of the history, structure, dialects, etc. of Japanese, technical but accessible.
4.13 A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar (2008, Makino and Tsutsui). Third in the three-part series of grammar dictionaries.
3.1.2 與其給魚，不如給魚竿 (Questions about Tools)
- Can I find a better way to change character encoding than the method described above in entry 1.3?
- What is the best way to scan hardcopy Japanese texts such that they become easy- to-manage text files? I want to scan something in, then be able to cut and paste characters from it into Internet dictionaries, for example, or be able to convert it into Word document and use Dr. Eye to help me decipher it. Answer: Possibly using Adobe Acrobat 9, OCR.
- How can I convert Word and PDF documents into Html documents? Once I learn to do this I can use Internet tools such as Rikaichan to help me decipher the document.
- Are there better online dictionaries than those I’ve listed above in item 1.1?
- What is the best electronic dictionary for me? Is it worth it to buy one? Answer: Could consult http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html
- How can I use more intelligently the various reference works contained in JapanKnowledge, located on the UCB East Asian Library website? For that matter, which of the other tools provided by this library would be useful for me to learn, and what tricks are there to using them?
- How can I use more skillfully the electronic version of the Mochizuki Buddhist encyclopedia?
- How can I use more skillfully the Buddhist Studies search engine Inbuds?
- What other important electronic tools are there for Sinologists or Buddhologists? Answer: Nakamura's dictionary is also available in PDF.
- Besides the Microsoft IME method for inputting Japanese, what other applications are available? Are any of them better than the MS version? For example, how well do any of the others pick up on character usage patterns of a given user and thereby guess more accurately which Kanji a user wants to input? What applications are there for inputting a Kanji without knowing how to pronounce it? What about for inputting less common Kanji, that are not contained in the MS IME?
- Are there applications or websites in which I can paste in a passage containing a lot of Kanji, and it will tell me how to pronounce all the Kanji in the passage? Answer: Yes, see resource 1.1.2, above. What about if I want to convert the entire passage into romaji?
- Are there any good Japanese-Japanese, or Japanese-English dictionaries available as software applications? Something equivalent to the Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary, for example?
- How can I mark Kanji and then get furigana for pronunciations next to them? In Japanese Word? Is it possible in another way?
- What's the *best* way to find the romanization for an author's name, publisher's name, etc.? Is there a Japanese equivalent to the US Library of Congress, for example? Answer: I spoke with a Japanese librarian about this, and there's no fail-safe way. Here are six ways to proceed. (1) Check the National Diet Library (http://opac.ndl.go.jp/index_e.html), (2) check GeNii of the National Institute of Informatics (http://www.nii.ac.jp/services/service-j.shtml#01), (3) for academic articles rather than books, check CiNii (http://ci.nii.ac.jp/en), (4) for Buddhist things, check Taisho University library (http://www.lib.tais.ac.jp/servlet/opac.OpacFormServlet?lang=ENG&tab_index=1&src_id=1), (5) as a backup, check WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/), which has some libraries (such as Waseda?) that are not included in other databases--and includes romanization of the titles of books as well, and (6) finally, for small Buddhist publications, check with seminary or temple (esp. honzan) websites associated with the publication. One hint: in databases that give author's name in romaji, sometimes macrons are not included over long vowels. So if you see the name written two ways, one with and one without the macron, probably the one *with* the macron is correct.
- Is there a database in which I can see large numbers of examples of a term in *good* usage, similar to the Academia Sinica databases for Chinese?
- What are the Japanese "equivalents" for the following, if they are indeed different from the US ones: UMI database, LoC, NYT, Amazon.com, Youtube, Google?