Apropros of the recent discussion on kanji, no kanji, and word processing, I thought I might comment on the recent proliferation of electronic Chinese and Japanese tools. For Japanese there is Rikai and Rikai-chan, for Chinese there is Wenlin. The two do similar things, but with limitations. Rikai and Rikai-chan are web tools that only work with Mozilla. They give you the reading of kanji as you move your cursor over a word, but only in an .html environment. Wenlin does the same thing, but in more environments, notably Microsoft Word among others. Prof. Hargett has been heard to say superlative things about Wenlin, such as "it has changed everything!" (he can correct me if I'm wrong).
Here are the differences: right now, Wenlin must be purchased for a dear price. Rikai-chan is share-ware, but because it must be used with an .html platform one must have all one's files in that format. With MSWord files it isn't that hard to convert to .html then use Mozilla to read them, but, for example, with .pdf files one must do two conversions (assuming one has an upgrade of Adobe Acrobat in the first place) to use the software.
Still, in either case, Prof. Hargett is right: WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I myself have become so very spoiled with this sort of technology. Add to this the ability to add furigana to a MSWord text very easily (and, for that matter, to add pinyin gloss to Chinese text) and we live in very good times.
Internet searches, led by Google, have also changed the research world. I just finished a translation from Meiji Japanese to English that would have taken me years more without the ability to "Google" obscure terms, people, places, names, etc. I remember vividly going to a graduate school seminar meeting at which my advisor, Edwin McClellan, asked the three students there if we recognized some obscure terms he had come across in a recent translation of a Japanese text he had been working on. Surprisingly, we did recognize two of the three off the tops of our heads. But that was lucky for him. If we hadn't, he would have been relegated to hours if not days in the library. Today, one would simply "Google" the terms and within seconds (probably) find the answers.
So, rejoice all ye who enter East Asian Studies today. And, never, never, forget what wonders the electronic age has brought us.
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These tools are great! There is a free Chinese add-on for Firefox called Perapera-kun. It only works on websites and, annoyingly, must be turned on again when you go to a new page, but still very handy.
There are also some great dictionaries you can download for your computer. For Windows, my friends have had good experiences with a word processing/dictionary program called JWPCE which can be downloaded here. For Mac users, I recommend J-edict which can be downloaded here. They are especially good for kanji look-up. J-edict is nice for Mac because it also gives you the option to search for a character by drawing, as you can with the windows IME-pad. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything similar to the IME-pad on the Mac OS. Clue me in if you know.
I'm sure lots of people know about these dictionaries, but I've come across people who haven't so I thought I'd chime in.
Sometimes I am frustrated with how long it takes to find things through electronic dictionaries and google. I imagine that in the future if we could just "think" our request into a search function, that I'd still be frustrated with how long it took. As such, I refuse to reflect on what a hateful chore it is to actually manually turn the physical pages of a paper dictionary and, god forbid, actually have to walk around looking for an obscure reference text in the library (and I'm old enough to have thoroughly enjoyed the old index card in a file box Dewey Decimal system in libraries). This is all sort of tongue in cheek. But really it's not.
They say "there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going", but learning an East Asian language is hard enough without having to worry about time killed just looking for information. It seems petty to worry about it, but it's incredible looking back at how much time was spent in EAJ 410/411 simply searching for something, even when it was easy to find. Even with nothing but fast searches, the sheer volume of what has to be searched is crushing and the act of turning a page in a dictionary suddenly becomes an itemized enemy.
Yet just think, in the future when you can plug yourself into the Matrix people will simply download the East Asian fluency pack, and then we'll all have something to complain about. I'm already so mad I could spit.
I think that in some ways the google/rikai revolution of sorts is fabulous, but in other ways it makes me pause.
Google doesn't have all the information in the world after all, just the most popular information. Many times it will give you a good place to start without fleshing it out or giving you a whole picture.
Take a recent search I had. I was looking for information on the history of the creation of Odaiba. I googled it and found page after page of basically the same information in a few slightly contradictory forms. Most of it was word-for-word the same as Wikipedia. I sometimes find myself hitting a wall when I use google to search for in depth information. A quick overview is usually easy enough, but try to dig deeper and you might become overwhelmed at all the noise.
Also, I'm sort of an old-fashioned character who likes looking things up in her Nelson's and writing out notes using kanji, but I think there is a definite drawback to all the shortcuts. Knowledge hard-won tends to stick better than something you just looked up on google or type in the electronic dictionary to get a translation. I always beat myself up when I look up a word in the dictionary my friend says in Japanese, glance at the English equivalent, and then totally forget the Japanese word a second later.
First of all, let me say that I did not pay Jessica to write her comment--but she should have asked me before posting, because she might have been able to squeeze me for all the bookishness I'm worth.
I agree with everything she wrote, as any of you who have taken EAS205 know. That said, let me add this: what Google and other electronic searches do better than books is comb the haystack in the first place. Once you find the needle, then you need books to assess its size, composition, sharpness, etc. In the annotated translation I've been working on the author mentions over a dozen people by last name only. For example, he wrote that he met a "Miss Stoddart" in Italy and had a good conversation with her. Hmmm, I thought, who was this woman? Someone important? Thanks to the internet and some judicial searching, I discovered her full name, birth and death dates, and even what book she published that was relevant to the travelogue. I shudder to think how long that would have taken without electronics. When I was working on my dissertation I took electronic notes of every work Hayashi Fumiko wrote (and I read over the course of two years). Then, when I sat down to write the thesis, I could easily find minute details (using a primitive electronic search--I bought special software that effectively did the same thing that a Windows File search does today) that otherwise would have been lost, like how many times she mentioned Tolstoy in her diaries.
Finally I'll say that by nature of the medium, electronic databases and books tend not to foster deep, analytical thoughts on complex subjects. But maybe with new technology, like the Kindle screen that reduces eye strain, that will change too?
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