(no subject)

[muckefuck]

It looks like I have totally impressed one of my co-workers with my ability to find records for Japanese books when really I'm just a chimp with good luck. Here's what I owe my success to:

1. Japanese publishers for almost invariably arranging all the vital bibliographic information neatly in the collophon. It doesn't matter how unreadably artsy the title page is, you can always learn what the damn thing is called by turning to the back of the book. Many publications even include furigana for the author's names, which is a godsend since they have the most idiosyncratic damn readings immaginable. (One author's personal name is so obscure that there isn't even a kanji for it in the standard set.) I've only had to paw through P.G. O'Neill's Japanese names a few times so far.
2. OCLC for allowing default display of vernacular text. Really, it would be nigh-impossible for me to find anything otherwise. I'd be reduced to painstakingly decoding individual characters. As it is, I just drop the romanisations for the few I know into the search fields and then compare the results to what's in hand. If their squiggles match my squiggles, ROXOR!
3. Jim Breen and his fantastic online dictionary. My Hadamitzky and Spahn is simply not up to the task and they never sprang for that Kenkyusha's I asked for. Plus, he gives more and easier ways to search for a recalcitrant kanji than those others.

With all this going for me, I'm warming to the project more than I thought I would. As for the publications themselves, so far a lot that's lovely and nothing that's nasty. More than I can say for most of what I do!

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Another fantastic online dictionary, especially for usage, is the Eijirou dictionary ...

[pne.livejournal.com]

I love me the WWWJDIC, too.

[bikerbearmark.livejournal.com]

Hey, no fair! You picked up tips that it took me years living in Japan to figure out!

As for WWWJDic vs. Kenkyusha, JDic has the extremely redeeming feature that it's online, and it's meant to be read from either Japanese and English. However, dictionary entries tend to be rather telegrammatic and don't give a great sense of how a word is really used in context. Kenkyusha is a much better dictionary, but it's written for the Japanese market, and unfortunately it assumes a high level of Japanese proficiency to be able to use it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Telegrammatic is all I really need for cataloging purposes. I'm going to leave the heavy lifting to someone else who really knows the language anyway. I'll need a Kenkyshua soon enough because it's considered normative for romanisation purposes (mainly things like word division).