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Eijiro is the "big dog" of Japanese-English dictionaries. It's actually a suite of dictionaries--the two main ones are Eijiro (yes, the same name as the whole package), which has 1.66 million English-to-Japanese entries, and Waeijiro, which has 1.94 million Japanese-to-English entries (as of ver. 116, June 17, 2008). Eijiro also includes separate dictionaries of example sentences, abbreviations, and acronyms. For the JLT Axim, all of those dictionaries are combined into one, which appears in the Dict menu as "英辞郎." It was made and continues to be updated by a society for professional translators; as such, it's especially rich in difficult and obscure terms, colloquial expressions, and technical terms. When a conversation reaches an impasse over a critical word or expression, the electronic dictionaries come out--it's common for me to quickly find it in Eijiro or Waeijiro, while my Japanese friends pounding away on their high-end Wordtanks and Ex-Words come up dry ("come up dry: 成果［収穫］がない、実を結ばない◆捜査や調査が"). Eijiro has many example sentences and sub-terms (take a look at the Kenkyusha page if you'd like to see a direct comparison of Eijiro with one of the major commercial dictionaries). Eijiro was designed for Japanese users and there's a lot of Japanese in the definitions, but PDA users have serveral advantages. You can quickly jump from any word you don't know to see its definition and pronunciation--and come back with a single tap.
Here's an entry from Eijiro (simpler entries fit in a single screen). The top section of the screen is just a list of the keywords returned by the search, the bottom section contains the actual definitions, and you can drag the dividing line up or down to change the proportions as you wish. If you want to compare with any electronic dictionary you have at hand, Eijiro finds 36 words and phrases beginning with "bully" (Kenkyusha, typical of the dictionaries included in EDs, finds 7.) Click the left image to see a larger 480x640 version; the actual resolution of a VGA PDA screen is actually higher than I can reproduce here (see below). These screenshots are from EBPocket running on an Axim X50V; WDIC running on a Palm will look a little different, but you'll get the same results and the program works about the same way. Also, these screenshots are from an older version in which Eijiro and Waeijiro were separate (thus "Eijiro" and "Waeijiro" in the title bar; in the current version it would say "英辞郎"). Also, in the current version, most Japanese words in the English-to-Japanese entries would be followed their hiragana pronunciations (saving you the trouble of looking those up).
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And here's what you get when you look up a Japanese word (click any to see it in full VGA):
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Note that I've sized the images here to appear about the same physical size as the Axim X50V's screen (depending on your monitor, of course); however the actual Axim screen squeezes a full 480x640 pixels into that space, so it's much sharper and easier to read (more pixels in the same size=higher resolution). You can click each image to see the actual 480x640 pixels you'd get on the screen of an Axim or other VGA PDA, although because the image will then be much larger than on the Axim screen it still won't look quite as sharp as the real thing. And of course you can change the text size to be larger or smaller, too, which will also affect legibility.
Basically, enter a word in the search window and tap find (you can see that in the first part of the animation on the right, below). Pretty easy, huh? See the general instructions for particulars.
I'm sure you noticed that there's quite a bit of Japanese in those screenshots. The strength of the PDA system is that you can easily jump from any of those words to its entry in any other dictionary--you can find the pronunciation and a full definition almost instantly. Simply highlight the word, tap and hold the stylus on it, and choose what dictionary you'd like to look it up in. And then tap the back arrow at the bottom of the screen to come back. You can do it the other way, too. For words that are normally written in kanji or kanji-and-kana (e.g., "見る"), Eijiro accepts searches only in kanji or kanji-and-kana. But you can enter the word in hiragana in the Readings dictionary and instantly jump to the correct entry in Eijiro.
| Look up a word in another dictionary | Find the pronunciation of a word (again, most words in E-to-J entries now include furigana) | Use Readings to look up a Japanese word | |||
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Eijiro is made for translators, so it assumes you already know basic vocabulary. Sometimes if you search for a fairly basic word, you won't find it--in that case, look in Edict. Having both dictionaries gives you just about every Japanese word you're ever likely to encounter.
For more information on how to use the EBPocket software and the PDA itself, see the general instructions.
Eijiro is mainly sold as a download from the website of EDP, the group that made and continues to maintain it. The download costs 1980 yen for PDIC format--certainly the biggest bargain around--and 5000 yen for EPWING format. They've recently changed their payment processor, so buying it is much easier than it used to be (hint: use rikaichan on Firefox to show what to enter where on the order form). PDIC format is for Palm users running WDIC or people using a PDIC format reader program on a desktop or laptop computer, but Windows Mobile users will need the EPWING version. I also offer a special JLT version of Eijiro. My version has yomigana added next to almost every Japanese word, both the keywords and words in the definitions, allowing words to be searched by hiragana as well as kanji and making it much easier to read the definitions. The JLT version is available with the Complete System; for licensing reasons it is NOT available independently. The Complete System is a like-new factory refurbished top-of-the-line PDA with all the software and dictionaries installed, tested, and ready to use as soon as you open the box. The JLT conversion of Eijiro and its sale on this website is by written permission of EDP (August 11, 2008). "Eijiro" is a registered trade mark of Sachiko Michihata.
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