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fifthchamber
5th November 2001, 16:57
Hello all,
I have recently been involved in the translation of a few 'modern' books on Bujutsu and have found that the book that I am currently using for the definition of the Kanji (while good generally) Is far too 'general' for a large amount of the terms used in the 'Budo world'.
I am aware that this is probably due to the age of the Kanji used by most of the books and was wondering which book I should but on Kanji that gives the best likelihood of my characters being in it?
I have got a copy of a book that contains the 1,850 odd "general use Kanji" But this is not enough..I have ordered the "Kodansha's pocket Kanji dictionary" and "The kanji dictionary" which both are listed as containing over 10,000 derivatives but was wondering if anyone here had any hints on the best buy books for this kind of work?
Thanks for your help.
Abayo.

P Goldsbury
5th November 2001, 21:35
In my experience language dictionaries are only as good as the skills and knowledge of the compilers and I am sure that this holds true of Japanese and the specialist vocabulary of bujutsu and budo. I think there is no one dictionary that will satisfy your needs and I currently use the following:

Spahn & Hadamitzky, The Kanji Dictionary, Tuttle 1996.
(Easy to use once you have mastered their radical system, but severely limited in specialist vocabulary.)

John R. Haig, The New Nelson, Tuttle 1997.
(A revision of a famous dictionary which uses the 214 radical system. This has more compounds than Spahn & Hadamitzky, but is less easy to use: you always need to know the first character of a compound word.)

I also have Halpern's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (Kenykusha, 1990), but I rarely use it. It is good for classification of shades of meaning, but more frustrating to use than the other two.)

Koh Masuda, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Kenkyusha, 1974.
(This is the largest version of a family of dictionaries organised alphabetically in romaji. It is out of date and of little use for anything technical.)

Shin Daijiten, Kodansha, 1993
(A Japanese monolingual dictionary organised according to stroke count. Contains many obscure character variations.)

Kojien Dai-go-han, Taishukan, 1999.
(The latest edition of a very 'authoritative' Japnese monolingual dictionary for general users, but still of limited use for a specialist.)

T Morohashi, Kanwa Daijiten, Taishukan, 1955-1960; T Morohashi, Shin Kanwa Jiten, Taishukan, 1992.
(Another large 'authoritative' monolingual dictionary: the last stop when all else fails.)

If I had to choose from among the above, I would go for the Kodansha Shin Daijiten and the Kojien.

Best regards,

Peter Goldsbury,
_____________
P A Goldsbury,
Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Hiroshima University

Don Cunningham
6th November 2001, 17:11
You've hit the problem exactly, but the solution is a bit more elusive. Much of the kanji from koryu is outdated and frequently not in common use any more in Japan. I've found that many of the older kanji forms are included in the descriptions of their modern form, but that doesn't help much when you're trying to find the kanji based on stroke count or radical in an index.

I've found Spahn and Hadamitzky, The Kanji Learner's Dictionary, seems to offer the most descriptions of older kanji which have been modified to modern usuage, but their indexing based on radicals still is a problem because it is organized only on the modern forms. None of the kanji dictionaries I've seen even cover the older kanji that have fallen completely out of use.

Good luck and let me know if you find any dictionaries that do help. I need one as well. ;)

P Goldsbury
6th November 2001, 22:55
I assume Don is thinking of 'The Learner's Kanji Dictionary', "a concise edition of the highly acclaimed Kanji Dictionary" (to quote the blurb on the dust jacket). As this suggests, it is a portable version of the larger dictionary which has "over" 47,000 compounds. The smaller version has the advantage of giving the stroke count of each character, with small numbers at the beginning of each stroke. However, as Don states, very few older variations are given.

If we take an example, 'ki' as in 'ai-ki', this appears on p.52 of the Learner's Kanji Dictionary (0a6.8) and the only variant is the older version, with 'komei' (rice) as part of the character, in place of the katakana 'me'. It appears (also as 0a6.8) on p.92 of the larger Hadamitzky/Spahn dictionary, with the same variant, but with many more compound words. The style (font) used to print the character is also different.

The same character is given on p. 628 of 'The New Nelson' under Radical 84 (the 'kigamae' radical), but there are two other older variants of the character given, in addition to 'komei': the 'ka' (fire), and the katakana 'no'.

On p.1305 of Kodansha's Shindaijiten, the 'kigamae' radical is given, but with many more variants. The 'kigamae' radical is not so common, but there are 12 or 13 combinations given, as against just one in Hadamitzky & Spahn and a total of 5 in Nelson. In addition to the compounds, there is an explanation of the origin of the radical and of the variants (in Japanese, of course). (The ISBN of this dictionary is 4-06-123141-3.)

The Kojien is organised on the a-i-u-o-e systemand 'ki' is given on p.621. Over 20 meanings of the word are given, but there are no older variants of the actual character. There is a full page of closely written text explaining the various phrases in contemporary Japanese, using the word 'ki'.

Your original post indicated that you are involved in the translation of 'modern' books on bujutsu. To my mind, this involves not only understanding the roots of the original characters, but also explaining what they meant, then and now. My experiece of translation from Japanese has been limited to old texts like the Kojiki, and to 19th century works, but I have found the need not only for specialist dictionaries of older characters (not the dictionaries listed in this and my earlier post) which indicate how to read the characters, but for more dictionaries of modern Japanese which explain how the modern variants are now understood. Unfortunately, no bilingual dictionary known to me meets such needs.

Best regards,

Peter Goldsbury,
_____________
P A Goldsbury,
Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Hiroshima University

Don Cunningham
7th November 2001, 17:20
Sorry, Peter, but I meant the larger version. I have both, but the books are in my library at home. I can't look at them now to get the titles correct. The smaller version does include a helpful index based on stroke count, but this is not in the larger version. It is arranged by radicals. However, the relevant kanji associated with the specific radical are then presented in sequence based on stroke counts. It took me a long time to figure this out, but you can actually find the kanji based first on the radical and then on the stroke count. I don't know whether it is more or less effective than other systems, but it does seem to work.

Per your example, 0a6.8, the "O" indicates the stroke count of the radical group. In this case, there is no radical, so the stroke count is apparently not an issue. The "a" refers to the specific radical class within that group while the "6" refers to the actual radical. The "8" indicates the kanji associated with the radical has a stroke count of 8 strokes.

Please excuse any errors in my description or explanation, but this is basically how the system works in the larger Hadamitzky/Spahn dictionary.

Chris Li
7th November 2001, 23:12
Originally posted by P Goldsbury
Your original post indicated that you are involved in the translation of 'modern' books on bujutsu. To my mind, this involves not only understanding the roots of the original characters, but also explaining what they meant, then and now. My experiece of translation from Japanese has been limited to old texts like the Kojiki, and to 19th century works, but I have found the need not only for specialist dictionaries of older characters (not the dictionaries listed in this and my earlier post) which indicate how to read the characters, but for more dictionaries of modern Japanese which explain how the modern variants are now understood. Unfortunately, no bilingual dictionary known to me meets such needs.


To throw in my two cents...

Bilingual dictionaries are good for beginning students, but once you get serious about Japanese there's really no substitute for monolingual Japanese dictionaries. I almost never touch a bilingual dictionary except when I need to check the meaning of part of a definition from a monolingual dictionary.

Best,

Chris

P Goldsbury
7th November 2001, 23:29
Originally posted by Chris Li


To throw in my two cents...

Bilingual dictionaries are good for beginning students, but once you get serious about Japanese there's really no substitute for monolingual Japanese dictionaries. I almost never touch a bilingual dictionary except when I need to check the meaning of part of a definition from a monolingual dictionary.

Best,

Chris

I completely agree. However, the initiator of this thread appears to live in the UK and the original request seemed to me to be for bilingual dictionaries which contained character variants. Hence the long list. Here. also, the monolingual dictionaries differ considerably and, in any case, such dictionaries are pretty thin on the ground outside Japan. in my experience.

Regards,

Peter Goldsbury
_____________
P A Goldsbury,
Graduate School of Social Sciences,
Hiroshima University

fifthchamber
8th November 2001, 15:47
Thanks to you all!
Yeah..I had a feeling that would be the answer.. I think that I can obtain monolingual dictionaries from Sasuga Books..Any more suggestions on the titles that I should search for?
I also appreciate the fact that I may be trying to Waterski before I can swim but I also am determined to attempt it..It certainly has helped with my basic knowledge of 'simple' Kanji and I can work out the stroke counts and radicals far quicker than I could a month ago so it does have it's up side!
Thank you Peter..That list was almost exactly what I wanted. I will begin to search around for those titles now and also search for the types suggested by Chris Li (Thanks also!!)
Don, I will certainly give you a heads up if I manage to find a 'definative' one but from what has been posted here so far I wouldn't hold my breath! Thanks again to you all for trying to help me out here..
Abayo.

Adam DArcy
12th November 2001, 19:05
Hello,

Just to add my 2 cents worth - I have to echo the value of a monolingual Japanese dictionary, as well as a Kogo Jiten. After all, however, there is no substitute for a "human" dictionary, if you can gain access to one of those. Myself, it is my father in law who is always ready to lend a hand with Kanji/phrases that just don't show up in my denshi techou or dictionaries. Being a poet, he's quite handy with all sorts of words/phrases, etc. This has been invaluable in the past. So, once I ever get around to doing any kind of translation related to Koryu (or otherwise!) I pretty much always turn to him for guidance.

It goes without saying that there are plenty of expatriate, native Japanese individuals in the US and other areas abroad. I've heard many stories about how persons in other unrelated professions have loaned translation and consulting expertise to non-native translators. It usually seems to work out quite nicely.

Thanks,

Adam