The Super Dictionary for PPC (and Zaurus)

The most important thing is to get the Japanese version of whichever PDA or SmartPhone you choose--if you buy an English-language WM device, don't expect to be able to read and write Japanese on it (it's possible to install good Japanese support on some English-OS WM devices and to convert some English-OS devices to the Japanese version of WM, but doing so yourself entails significant difficulty and risk and is not possible for all models). You should also think about the display resolution: the standard 240x320 QVGA displays are OK, but the dictionaries (and everything else) will look much better on a 480x640 full VGA display, which is becoming more common on newer devices (trust me, it's worth the money--the difference is huge). Avoid Windows Mobile 5.0--users are reporting instability and bugginess (some love it, but too many are having problems for it to be worth taking a chance on); WM 2003, 2003SE, and 6 are reliable, rock solid on most machines, and just as capable, so stick with those. And, finally, you need a big memory card--a full slate of dictionaries can take well over 1 GB, so you should really pick up a 4 GB or larger card so you'll have room to do other things with your PDA, too (music, movies, GPS navigation, etc.). For making your own system, the Dell Axim X50V with WM2003 OS is probably the best buy, as the English version can be converted to Japanese. DO NOT get an X51V unless you're fairly skilled at hacking operating systems--it comes with WM5.0, as mentioned above, and users have been reporting all sorts of problems. While it runs beautifully if updated to WM6 and hacked to add Japanese, doing so is complicated and requires some experience in rewriting operating system code (none of the off-the-shelf WM6 upgrades work perfectly until you've gone and tweaked the code a bit; and some aren't compatible with the hacking necessary to add Japanese). Click here for a fuller discussion. If you haven't bought a PDA yet, take a look at my offerings--an X51V working beautifully, fully Japanese-capable English OS, with all dictionary software and dictionaries already installed and tested, English and Japanese versions of the X50V, and an iPAQ hx4700 with Japanese WM2003SE OS, all set up and ready to use (all JLT PDAs have been factory refurbished to new condition and still, as of fall 2009, are as good as the best current systems in performance and capability. If you've already got a PDA but find it hard to buy, convert, and install the dictionaries, you can buy them all already installed and tested on a memory card--for less than you'd pay for the card alone in a store (however, setting up your PDA to use the dictionaries would still be up to you).

First, install a dictionary reader program. I've tried and rejected almost every WM program out there. Most are terrible, and most of the ones that aren't bad work only with expensive but mediocre dictionaries sold by the program maker. The best program I've found is EBPocket. Because the large commercial dictionaries come in or can easily be converted to the EPWING format EBPocket uses and the program itself is excellent, that's where I've put my efforts. Here are instructions for setting up EBPocket. Don't actually start EBPocket for the first time until AFTER you've put the dictionaries you want on your memory card.

Now, you need to get some dictionaries. My free dictionaries are a good start (click "screenshots & details" next to each for a fuller description of each dictionary). These are based on the Edict project from Monash University and Prof. Jim Breen, extensively modified and converted to EPWING format by me. There are two Kanjidic options--choose one or the other, not both. Download them here:

(click here if you have trouble downloading; click here if you'd like to buy a memory card with these files already installed). Very important: Each EPWING dictionary is an entire folder with various files and subfolders inside. After unzipping the download, leave everything in the dictionary folder alone--moving or renaming anything or trying to open a file directly with any program will break the dictionary. When copying or moving a dictionary, be sure to copy or move the entire outermost dictionary folder--again, don't mess with anything inside of it and you'll be fine. Now, when you start up EBPocket for the first time, it'll automatically find and set itself up to use all the EPWING dictionaries anywhere on your device. If you've already been running EBPocket and want to add another dictionary, use the obvious "Add Dict" function or, for more control, "Edit Group" from the Tool menu.

The best resource around is Eijiro. Eijiro combines the virtues of being cheap and huge (nearly 4 million entries). It abounds with example sentences, current expressions (it's updated several times a year), technical stuff, everyday stuff, formal, and colloquial (often extremely colloquial) Japanese. You can buy Eijiro already in EPWING format for 5000 yen, or you can buy it in its usual PDIC format for 1980 yen and convert it yourself--it's actually quite easy to do. The complete Eijiro will eat up about 260 MB of your memory card. The best option, though, is to buy my JLT version of Eijiro in EPWING format--I've made significant changes that make it vastly more useful and convenient for the non-Japanese user (the regular version is extremely hard to use unless you're extremely fluent in reading kanji; my version is just as useful for the beginner and the expert).

You can also buy EPWING versions of most of the major commercial dictionaries on CD. Perhaps more conveniently, from Logovista, you can download some of them in Logovista's own proprietary format, which can be converted to EPWING quite easily using a program called dessed (how to navigate Logovista's site to get to the dictionaries; how to use dessed). If you don't get Eijiro, a particularly good buy is the Kenkyusha Intermediate E>J and J>E dictionary for about 4600 yen and 120MB (if you already have Edict and Eijiro, though, the Kenkyusha Intermediate doesn't add anything). The Kenkyusha Daijiten is much larger and far more useful, but at 25,000 yen it's quite expensive. Very useful, at least for high-level students, is a good kokugo jiten like Koujien or Daijirin. There are also good commercial French<>J, German<>J, Italian<>J, and probably many more dictionaries available in EPWING or Logovista format. Again, if you have trouble or would rather not buy and convert these dictionaries yourself, I can do it for you.

Finally, there are all sorts of EPWING dictionaries available for free online. Some of them are versions of the same dictionaries I've used (Edict, Enamdict, Kanjidic)--I think mine are quite a bit better, obviously (if I'd thought what was already available was great, I wouldn't have spent months making my own). However, some of the other choices are interesting. Note that these aren't my work, I haven't even tried some of them, and therefore I can't make any promises about them. Maximilk's site is a good place to start. Some of the most useful offerings I've found:

Shrink your dictionaries. EPWING format dictionaries are huge memory hogs--use a program called EBShrink to shrink the dictionaries into the much smaller .ebz format, which works just fine in EBPocket (shrunken dictionaries have the full contents and run just as fast as unshrunken ones). EBShrink comes as a free helper file included in the EBWin package, which you can find about halfway down the very long EBPocket page (install the unicode version). EBShrink is pretty self-explanatory, but click here if you'd like instructions. Note that my dictionaries are all pre-shrunk and ready to install--DON'T try to shrink them again!

Install your Dictionaries. First, if installing to an SD card, you must format the card. The best way is in the PDA itself using the CNetX FlashFormat program, but a digital camera will probably do in a pinch. If you don't format it, or format it in a Windows or Mac computer, it'll seem to work for a while, but then your files will start disappearing from the PDA. The dictionary folders can go anywhere on the memory card (except My Documents); I made a convenient "EBPocket Dictionaries" folder for mine. If you install the dictionaries before starting EBPocket for the first time, it should find them automatically. To add dictionaries later, use the "Edit Group" function in the "Tools" menu.

And the Sharp Zaurus? I don't know much about it, but I do know the Japanese versions have kanji handwriting recognition built in, and that it's supposed to work very well. Also, the Zaurus has an dictionary program built in, so just put my EPWING dictionaries on a card and stick it in and you're good to go. There are some resources listed on Jim Breen's Japanese page. In addition, the PDIC .dic format files for Eijiro and the files I made for WDIC might run on ZPDview for the Zaurus (again, whether or not ZPDview works with recent Zaurii is unknown). There may be other programs that can run PDIC files as well--it's worth looking into. Armin Rump's excellent site (which provided the key information I needed to make my Edict files work with WDIC) has clear and useful information for using Japanese dictionaries on the Zaurus.

Japanese Dictionaries for Windows Mobile PDAs

What to buy・How to set it up・Dictionaries for the Zaurus?・How to make your own EPWING dictionaries

What to buy

How to set up a dictionary on your Windows Mobile PDA or smartphone

Japanese Dictionaries for the Sharp Zaurus