Electronic Dictionaries with Particular Reference to the Design of an Electronic Bilingual Dictionary for English-speaking Learners of Japanese

This paper describes the different types of electronic billingual dictionaries currently available in Japan. It draws attention to their relative merits and demerits as a general introduction to a more detailed consideration of changes that would need to be made to a portable IC (Integrated Circuit)-card type of electronic bilingual dictionary in order that English-speaking learners of Japanese could use them more effectively. First, general changes to the design of the three dictionaries of an electronic billingual dictionary for this language pair are considered – the kanji-English-English-Japanese, and Japanese-English dictionaries. Then, specific changes to the kanji-English dictionary are considered. In particular (i) the look-up methods of existing portable electronic dictionaries, (ii) whether or not learners of a beginner to intermediate level of proficiency could use these look-up methods effectively, (iii) whether there are any other look-up methods more suited to the needs of this type of learner, and (iv) whether problems of look-up methods could be solved by different input methods. Search routines and database entries are illustrated.