Re: EDICT and gairaigo or colloquial nihongo

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Breen <jwb@example.com> writes:

    Jim> On Nov 19, 12:01am, Craig Oda wrote: } Subject: EDICT and
    Jim> gairaigo or colloquial nihongo
    >>> I'm starting to read Japanese short stories by loading the
    >>> text into mule and flying through it with trans and trans.el I

    Jim> Have you modified trans.el and edict.el? They are a bit
    Jim> elderly, and people tell me hey won't compile in the latest
    Jim> environments.

I had no problem with running trans.el in "raw" form; I don't know if
it compiles.  I have edict.el-- compiling now; the -- means that I had
to comment out half of the morphological transformations to get it to
work.  So if I have dictionary form, I'm fine, but currently I can't
find any conjugations of consonant-stem verbs :-).  If'n'when I get it 
going, I'll let y'all know, of course.

    >>> I do have some problem reading colloquial Japanese or katakana

You should be able to modify trans.el to 
    >>> words.  I was wondering if there were any dictionaries out
    >>> there of colloquial Japanese.
[ snip ]
    >>> I'm sure that someone has already done it out there????  :-)

    Jim> Do it. Please. I add the occasional colloquialisms, but I
    Jim> don't come by a lot.

Um, copyrights?  I do have one slang dictionary (Using Japanese Slang,
Kassechau & Eguchi) which is quite good, and and I found a friend's
Japanese Slang Uncensored (Constantine) also good.  They're generally
available in good book stores (Yaesu Book Center, probably Kinokuniya
or Maruzen, too).  But I'm leery of scanning them in, even though in
both cases the text would have to be extremely heavily edited since
they're not in dictionary form, but rather meanings and etymologies
are mixed in the prose/

You would want to be careful with this though; slang is often used
like "seasonal words" in haiku, to mark a person's origin.  So it
would be best if possible to mark slang and colloquialisms with their
regional affiliations.

I personall plan to do a technical EDICT for Economics; that's a
project for next term.  I'm going to do it by carefully noting all the
vocabulary as I go along in preparing my introductory Micro course,
and using a variety of dictionaries to cross check difficult terms.
This is well within the fair usage clauses.  I will *not* be doing any
scanning....

I've noticed that economics terminology is horribly badly translated
into Japanese, with no rhyme or reason and even less connection with
normal usage of the terms than there is in English.  Anybody else
noticed this in their own fields?

One thing that I would really like, which would have to be an ongoing
project, is a dictionary of newspaper jargon.  The English-language
press usually spells out abbreviations the first time the term is
used, as in "Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)".  But Japanese
newspapers never seem to....

Steve

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com
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