Project Details
Projekt
Comprehensive Japanese-German Dictionary
Subject Area
Asian Studies
Term
from 2015 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 276815900
A linguistically and lexicographically reliable, comprehensive dictionary of the modern Japanese language is a longstanding desideratum. The dictionaries at hand are either hopelessly outdated, small-size, or non-state-of-the-art patchwork compilations. The Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (GJDW), which is the first Japanese-German dictionary initiated by German scholars and not exclusively designed to meet the needs of Japanese users, bridges a lexicographical gap of 75 years. With over 130,000 main entries and uncountable sub-entries in altogether three volumes, it encompasses the standard Japanese language from the end of the 19th century up to today, including argot, dialect words, childrens language and technical vocabulary of areas such as biology, biochemistry, flora and fauna, IT, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, physics, law, sports, economics and finance, to name just the most important ones; it covers the entire modern language including technical and scientific vocabulary. Features in Overview Latin transcript of all headwords, compounds and typical expressions Indication of morpheme boundaries in headwords Part-of-speech labels With verbs, indication of conjugation class Indication of basic and advanced level vocabulary based on Japanese vocabulary and frequency studies Listing of compounds in separate blocks (headword as first or second unit) Separate listing of sayings and idiomatic expressions (after asterisks) Historical and technical explanations Presentation of undisputed etymologies With loan words from Western languages, indication of source language With terms from flora and fauna, indication of scientific nomenclature Separately listed comments on grammatical or historical-linguistic features Illustrative phrases from literature, science, advertising, newspapers, magazines (volumes one and two: over 20,000 each) with references Bibliography of references None of these features is standard for Japanese-foreign language lexicography, the majority is innovative. For Japanese as source language, there is no comparable bilingual dictionary of this size and structure, for any other Western language. The project was launched in 1998 at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo, and was transferred to the Freie Universität Berlin in 2006. Funding was provided by various German and Japanese sponsors. Volume 1 (A-I, 46,545 main entries on 2,544 pp) was published in 2009. A digital version has been put online in 2010. Volume 2 (J-N, 41,390 main entries, app. 2,500 pp), lexicographically completed in 2014, will be published in April / May 2015 and put online approximately one year thereafter. The funds applied for in this application are to secure three full-time positions for a final period of three years (January 2016 - December 2018) for the three lexicographers currently working on the project in order to prepare volume 3 and complete the project.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
