Import...

This menu item allows you to import dictionaries in various formats.

When this menu item is selected, the Import dictionary dialog shown in Figure 1 will be displayed. From this dialog, you can select the dictionary format you would like to import and set the name of the destination dictionary created by the importation.

Figure 1. The Import dictionary dialog

The dictionary format most widely used by Japanese dictionaries available on the Internet is the Edict type line format. Edict (a general purpose Japanese-English dictionary) and Enamdict (a proper name Japanese-English dictionary) are constantly being updated by Jim Breen at Monash University and are available free from the Monash University ftp site (and its mirrors) as well as from www.lavasoft.com. The latest versions can always be found at:

ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/

Once you have one of these dictionaries downloaded and uncompressed on your hard drive, it can be imported into JWM. In this process, each entry of the Edict dictionary is read in and converted into a JWM dictionary entry and added to the destination dictionary you specified.

To import Edict, for example, select Edict type line format from the popup menu, enter a destination dictionary name (such as 'Edict import'), press the Import button and select the Edict source file. You should then see an information dialog similar to that shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. The Import 'Edict type line format' dialog

The information dialog will show how the importation is progressing, including how many words could not be imported (due to English definitions being too long, etc). These rejected words will be saved in the Edict.reject file along with the reason the word was rejected.

Once the importation is complete, you should add the imported dictionary to the Reference dictionary list so that it will be searched when you look for words in the Reference dictionary.

Importing Japanese-English SJIS text files
This new import filter was added in JWM v5.7 and can import any Japanese-English word list (one line per entry) in SJIS format. Kana, Kanji and English can be separated with a single-byte Roman space, double-byte Kana space ($8140) or tab. Thus, word lists can now be imported easily from databases, Japanese wordprocessing documents, etc. Importing works correctly whether the Kana or Kanji information occurs first in a line, though English must always be at the end of the line.

JWM should import each line correctly if it includes a maximum of 8 Kanji, 15 Kana and 45 English characters. After importing a text file, you will need to edit each word if you want its furigana to be correct as well.