Sharp's Big Daddy of electronic dictionaries
Sharp's latest electronic dictionary is an impressive piece of work, cramming 46 dictionaries into a 141 x 106.8 x 10.8mm package. The PW-A8100 also features what may be a first, the ability to add extra dictionary volumes using what looks suspiciously like an SD card slot (but is most likely [sigh] Sharp's own proprietary format).
Probably not an ideal recommendation for those still finding their feet with the language since the focus is on J-J dictionaries and encyclopedia-type volumes, but should be worth a look for the hardcore Japanologists (and Japanese people, needless to say).
Available from February 10 in Japan; should retail for about Y45,000.
[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]
Posted by aragoto at February 02, 2004 03:18 PM | TrackBackG, have you purchased a denshi jisho? If so, would you recommend it? I need to buy one but cant make up my mind.
This page seems to be the authority...
http://www.bornplaydie.com/japan/dictionary/dictionary.htm
I have a Sony DD-IC700S; tiny silver thing with about 20 dictionaries in it. It's pretty squarely aimed at Japanese users where things like the Canon Wordtank used to be a bit friendlier to language learners (you could [can still?] switch the interface to English, for example); I like it, though. Worth having a play with.
Posted by: aragoto on February 2, 2004 09:42 PMThis would be a good place to mention Jim Breen's EDICT/JDIC/KANJIDIC projects (see http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html). These are just public electronic dictionaries themselves, but there are a number of freeware/payware apps on different platforms that use them. I use JEDict (see http://jedict/com/) on OS X.
Posted by: Adam Rice on February 3, 2004 08:19 AMI like the online version of Eijiro at Space Alc (http://www.alc.co.jp), too; can be very slangy and is inaccurate in some places, but the sheer number of entries and examples is often helpful in unblocking a brain jam when translating. I must say I probably use that more than any hardware dictionaries these days. Available on CD, too, with Mac/Windows apps for reading the data and creating custom dictionaries (I'd imagine the size of the database might well preclude dumping it into a PDA, though--it's over 100MB if I remember rightly).
Posted by: aragoto on February 3, 2004 03:58 PM