We are very excited to announce the launch of our newly designed Japanese dictionary: the new JapanDict. You can visit us in at our usual web address www.japandict.com.
We’ve worked so hard to make the new design faster, easier to navigate and more user-friendly. We’ve also changed a lot of internals on how the dictionary works so even if it cannot be seen directly, the dictionary is much better now.
Some of the changes we’ve made are:
New JapanDict with improved design
We believe in simplicity. We wanted to create a simple but feature complete dictionary easy to use and easy to understand. That was and it still is one of the key characteristics of JapanDict.
The new design tries to keep this simplicity while providing a more modern look, updated to nowadays standards.
Better search
We know the importance of a good search engine. Google changed forever the internet search providing a search engine that just works.
We’re not Google, but we’ve improved our search engine so much that we believe you will be able find any word you’re looking for. For instance, now we’re providing the list of found words in order from more common to less common, and we’ve also added variations so it’s now possible to find related words with subtle variations.
Audio pronunciation
Ever wondered what was the proper way to pronounce a Japanese word? Now it’s possible to hear the Japanese pronunciation of most of the words in the dictionary. While it’s a computer generated file, the pronunciation is accurate enough to give you an idea on how to pronounce it.
Better romaji
Romaji is the transcription of Japanese words using the roman alphabet. In the previous version, we transcribed all the words to romaji using our own algorithm. Even though it was pretty good, it was not 100% acurate.
We’ve switchet to the romkan library and all words are now transliterated using the Hepburn romanization system.
Latest dictionary information
This dictionary would not have been possible without the JMDict project. They provide the most valuable information we use in JapanDict. The previous version of the dictionary was using an outdated version of the dictionary definition.
Now, not only we’re using the latest release but we’ve automated the download and importation of the JMDict dictionary so newer releases are going to be included into JapanDict much faster and more regularly than before.
Much more!
This is only the beginning. We’ve also fixed a lot of little but annoying bugs and improved the underlying code in which all the dictionary relies. We’re very excited of all the changes we’ve made and we hope you like them.
Give it a try and let us know!
Visit JapanDict Japanese dictionary
