I guess really to be more traditional this topic should have been called something along the lines of "The Super Great Hyper Helpful Helpful Japanese Topic-o" but I decided against that.

I'm not completely new to Japanese but I'd deffinatly still class myself as a beginner however despite this fact I'm going on to give a game translation a bash. Like many others before me I thought this would be a good idea and a good way to learn some new things in ROMHacking as well as learning Japanese, you can't beat 2 for 1. Although I never considered the fact that this may mean I now have the difficulty of learning ROMHacking coupled with the difficulty of learning Japanese which is what has really happened.

But that's not why I made this topic!

I have came across a couple of things (ok 1 thing so far) that the average JORDAN (Japanese Orintated ROMHacker Distinguishably Also Newbie) may find useful and I thought it may come in handy if there was a topic kicking about to share such finds.

Here's the first thing I found when I got side tracked looking for a Kanji

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-9g-49-en-70-198v.html - A Japanese -> English -> Japanese Dictionary for the Nintendo DS. When I first heard about the DS I thought it would be really handy for exactly this and now here it is. One of the most handy features is you can draw a kanji onto it and it'll translate it for you. I haven't actually bought it yet but I plan to in January so I'll make a better post about it then.

http://kanjidict.stc.cx/dict - A Kanji dictionary that allows searching by similar shape so you can slowly work your way to the kanji your looking for despite not being able to type or pronounce it

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/downloads/recommended/ime/default.mspx IME the application that lets you type in foriegn fonts on english keyboards, very useful in lots of places.

Finding the meaning of a Kanji is really not that hard.

There's a really powerful handwritting function in Word:



Knowing the Kanji is only part of the battle won. Understanding the grammar and particles is the most vital thing.

Just install the Japanese IME by Microsoft.

It's right there:



If you still can't find it, I'll explain in depth.

I made a mistake by the way.

The handwritting doesn't have anything to do with Word. It's integrated in the IME.

臣

I wrote the kanji above using the "handwriting tool".

You could use it in Open Office if you wanted to.

I have Windows XP by the way, maybe that's why you don't have the same options as I do.

To answer your question: No there's no dictionary. It's a handwriting tool, not a dictionary.

But you can still paste your kanji in any other third party dictionary. I recommend:

JQuickTrans

It's proven very useful so far.

Hmm.. bad idea.

I tried that myself but it's fiendishly slow. I hope you don't have much text, otherwise be prepared for a LONG translation.

Best of luck.

Hmm, useful Japanese stuff.

Linux users like myself? We don't have a Windows IME, so instead we use SCIM, you can add the Japanese input in your language options in your prefrences/system settings. Real simple.

Japanese to English, and English to Japanese site ---> http://www.rikai.com/perl/Home.pl --> good for translating kanji (adds furigana to kanji, plus gives you their meaning), not a bad dictionary if you are in need.

JWPCE (Japanese Word Processor) --> Has an awesome dictionary function ---> http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html
 If you have a Pocket PC, or Smart Phone you can get JWPCE for it also, which also takes advantage of hand writing recognition.

Jim Breens Dictionary, one of the best online dictionaries ---> http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html (HAS A HANDWRITING RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR KANJI) (If you use the handwriting system you need to write fairly big, as if you were writing on a real sheet of calligraphy paper, or else the system will have a hard time finding the kanji):::: For example, I took a picture, you should make sure you write in PROPORTION, or else the recognition is kind of poor.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6616/screenshotur4.jpg Also, there is a bug on my browser, if you are writing a stroke and move your mouse outside of the box, it will not stop drawing that one stroke... so as you write, stay in the box. This is a very new feature online, so I expect he will update it a lot. I am sure many people will use it.

Also, for Linux there is Kanjipad, which is a free installable handwriting interface for kanji.

Hmm, that is all that I can think of as of right now.

The recognition is a bit touchy on it. I prefer this, http://www.gtk.org/~otaylor/kanjipad/

It works DAMN well. However, Windows suckers can't use it haha. God I love Linux.

PS, I recommend JWPCE more than any other Japanese dictionary (except my denshi jisho). It is FREE, works on ANY operating system (even pocket PCs). It is simple, can look up kanji if need be.

This is the kind of denshi jisho I have --> http://store.aikotradingstore.com/caeljadi.html