E D I C T ========= Public Domain Japanese/English Dictionary file, coordinated by Jim Breen. CURRENT VERSION --------------- The version date and sequence number is included in the dictionary itself under the entry "EDICT". (Actually it is under the JIS-ASCII code "????". This keeps it as the first entry when it is sorted.) The master copy of EDICT is in the pub/Nihongo directory of monu6.cc.monash.edu.au. There are other copies around, but they may not be as up-to-date. The easy way to check if the version you have is the latest is from the size/date. INTRODUCTION ------------ EDICT is an attempt to produce a public domain Japanese/English Dictionary in machine-readable form. It was intended initially for use with MOKE (Mark's Own Kanji Editor) and related software such as JDIC and JREADER, however it has the potential to be used in a large number of packages. At present it is in the "public domain", however at some stage it may be placed under Gnu or Copyleft protection, mainly to prevent the work of its many contributors being exploited by commercial software developers. FORMAT ------ EDICT is in the "EDICT" format used by MOKE. It uses EUC coding for kana and kanji, however this can be converted to JIS or SJIS by any of the several conversion programs around. It is a text file with one entry per line. The format of entries is: KANJI [KANA] /english_1/english_2/.../ or KANA /english_1/.../ The English translations are deliberately brief, as the application of the dictionary is expected to be primarily on-line look-ups, etc. CONTENTS -------- EDICT consists of: (a) the basic EDICT distributed with MOKE 2.0. This was compiled by MOKE's author, Mark Edwards, with assistance from Spencer Green. Mark has very kindly released this material to the public domain as part of EDICTJ. A number of corrections have been made to the MOKE original, e.g. spelling mistakes, minor mistranslations, etc. It also had a lot of duplications, which have been removed. It contained about 1900 unique entries. Mark Edwards has also kindly given permission for the vocabulary files developed for KG (Kanji Guess) to be added to EDICT. (b) additions by Jim Breen. I laboriously keyed in a ~2000 entry dictionary used in my first year nihongo course at Swinburne Institute of Technology years ago (I was given permission by the authors to do this). I then worked through other vocabulary lists trying to make sure major entries were not omitted. This task is continuing, although it has slowed down, and I suspect I will run out of energy eventually. Apart from that, I have made a large number of additions during normal MOKE and JREADER usage (e.g. using it to read fj.* news.) (c) additions by others. Many people have contributed entries and corrections to EDICT. I am forever on the lookout for sources of material, provided it is genuinely available for use in the Public Domain. I am especially grateful to Theresa Martin who has been supplying a lot of useful material, plus very perceptive corrections. Hidekazu Tozaki has also been a great help with tidying up a lot of awry entries, and helping me identify obscure kanji compounds. A full list is at the back of this file. A massive group of contributions came from Sony, where Rik Smoody had put together a large online dictionary. At this stage EDICT is not as big as a good commercial dictionary, which typically has 20,000+ non-name entries with examples, etc. It is, however, bigger than some of the smaller printed dictionaries, and when used in conjunction with a search-and-display program like JDIC it provides an effective on-line dictionary service. COPYRIGHT? ---------- A word on copyright. Of course most of the material in EDICT came from other published lists. Dictionary copyright is a difficult point, because clearly the first lexicographer who published "inu means dog" could not claim a copyright violation over all subsequent Japanese dictionaries. What makes each dictionary unique (and copyrightable) is the particular selection of words, the phrasing of the meanings, the presentation of the contents (a very important point in the case of EDICT), and the means of publication. The advice I have received from people who know about these things is that EDICT is just as much a new dictionary as any others on the market. Readers may see an entry which looks familiar, and say "Aha! That comes from the XYZ Jiten!". They may be right, and they may be wrong. After all there aren't too many translations of neko. Let me make one thing quite clear. NONE of this dictionary came from commercial machine-readable dictionaries. I have a case of RSI in my right elbow to prove it. Please do not contribute entries to EDICT which have come directly from copyrightable sources. It is hard to check these, and you may be jeopardizing EDICT's PD status. LEXICOGRAPHICAL DETAILS ----------------------- EDICT is actually a Japanese->English dictionary, although the words within it can be selected in either language using appropriate software. (JDIC uses it to provide both E->J and J->E functionality.) The early stages of EDICT had size limitations due to its usage (MOKE scans it sequentially and JDXGEN, which is JDIC's index generator, held it in RAM.) This meant that examples of usage could not be included, and inclusion of phrases was very limited. JDIC/JDXGEN can now handle a much larger dictionary, but the compact format has continued. No inflections of verbs or adjectives have been included, except in idiomatic expressions. Similarly particles are handled as separate entries. Adverbs formed from adjectives (-ku or ni) are generally not included. Verbs are, of course, are in the plain or "dictionary" form. In working on EDICT, bearing in mind I want to use it in MOKE and with JDIC, I have had to come up with a solution to the problem of adjectival nouns [keiyoudoushi] (e.g. kirei and kantan), nouns which can be used adjectivally with the particle "no" and verbs formed by adding suru (e.g. benkyousuru). If I put entries in edict with the "na" and "suru" included, MOKE will not find a match when they are omitted or, the case of suru, inflected. What I have decided to do is to put the basic noun into the dictionary and add "(vs)" where it can be used to form a verb with suru, "(a-no)" for common "no" usage, and "(an)" if it is an adjectival noun. Entries appear as: KANJI [benkyou] /study (vs)/ KANJI [kantan] /simple (an)/ Where necessary, verbs are marked with "(vi)" or "(vt)" according to whether they are intransitive or transitive. (Work on this aspect is continuing.) I have also used (id) to mark idiomatic expressions, (col) for colloquialisms, (pol) for teineigo, etc. Users intending to make submissions to EDICT should follow the following simple rules: o all verbs in plain form. The English must begin with "to ....". Add (vi) or (vt) to the first translation if the nature of the verb is not implicit in the translation(s).; o add (an) or (a-no) or (vs) as appropriate to nouns. Do not put the "na" or "no" particles on the Japanese, or the "suru" auxilary verb. o indicate prefixes and suffixes by "(pref)" and "(suf)" in the first English entry, not by using "-" in the kanji or kana. o do not add definite or indefinite articles (e.g. "a", "an", "the", etc) to English nouns unless they are necessary to distinguish the word from another usage type or homonym. o do not guess the kanji. o do not use the "/", "[" or "]" characters except in their separating roles. o if you are keying from a romaji form, make sure you have the correct kana for "too/tou" and "zu", where the Hepburn romaji is often ambiguous. o do not use kana or kanji in the "English" fields. Where it is necessary to use a Japanese word, e.g. kanto, use romaji. USAGE ----- EDICT can be used as the dictionary within MOKE simply by renaming it "EDICT", (or JTOE.DCT in the new version 2.1 of MOKE.) If you are a MOKE user and have been adding to your EDICT using the "Ask English?" option, you may wish to append your additions. Why not send them to me and I will add them to EDICT? EDICT can be used, with acknowledgement, for any purpose whatever, EXCEPT for inclusion in new commercial products. Mark Edwards can, of course, use it in later MOKE releases. Stephen Chung may also be using it in his PD "JWP". CONTRIBUTIONS ------------- I will be delighted if people send me corrections, suggestions, and ESPECIALLY additions. Before ripping in with a lot of suggestions, make sure you have the latest version, as others may have already made the same comments. The preferred format for submissions is a JIS, EUC or Shift-JIS file (uuencoded for safety) containing replacement/new entries. Separate the amendments from the new material: e.g. **Amendments to EDICT yyyymmmdd Vyy-nnn** old entry1 new entry1 old entry2 ........ **New Entries** New entry1 New entry2 ......... I prefer not to get a "diff" or "patch" file as the master EDICT is under continuous revision, and may have had quite a few changes since you got your copy. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ---------------- Mark Edwards, Spencer Green, Alina Skoutarides, Takako Machida, Theresa Martin, Satoshi Tadokoro, Stephen Chung, Hidekazu Tozaki, Clifford Olling, David Cooper, Ken Lunde, Joel Schulman, Hiroto Kagotani, Truett Smith, Mike Rosenlof, Harold Rowe, Al Harkom, Per Hammarlund, Atsushi Fukumoto, John Crossley, Bob Kerns, Frank O'Carroll, Rik Smoody, Scott Trent, Curtis Eubanks, Jamie Packer, Hitoshi Doi, Thalawyn Silverwood, Makato Shimojima, Bart Mathias, Koichi Mori. Jim Breen (jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au) Department of Robotics & Digital Technology Monash University Caulfield East 3145 AUSTRALIA