hot pda's and word formatting question plus a legal question

[kotatsuneko]

so, ive been working on a japanese language guide on and off for the past 7 years or so, and want to do some experiments with it

hassle is, im no too good on word, so thought id pick you guys brains..

as the formatting has gone from 95/7/2000/xp in the documents, the material is all over the place as in

english entry japanese entry
abcdief skljdldj
sldodkooo sldjldjldjlkdj
adldlkdlnldn sldlkjddlkdjlkdj

sljldjldj dkldjljdl


you get the picture right? is there any way i can split up this text into 2 columns and edit them separately? the way word works, or limits what you can do is driving miss daisy crazy..

what i hope to have eventually would be something like:

english entry in romaji kanji entry romaji entry
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaa

all nice and tidy.. i want to try and mess with it in say a pdf format, which looks nice, and i think will allow hyperlinks which comes to my next question:

whats a really good pda, with a nice bright screen and something other than a rubbish pointer for input?

i figured that when before i get to the stage of the material being good enough to approach a publisher, i should really test it out in a real life situation, self publishing or printing the material wouldnt be practical, so thought i would try it in the cheapest way closest to a book, in a pda to see the good/bad points of the material..

also, quickie, if you have a word, with a similar, translation to that which appears in already published language books, is that a breach of copyright laws? i mean, just how do dictionary publishers etc get round the fact that hundreds of their books contain thousands of identical or near identical entries that can be found in other books?

ermmm cheers!

[Taro Toporific]

whats a really good pda, with a nice bright screen and something other than a rubbish pointer for input!

Sweeeeeeeeeeet, the new Clie PEG-UX50

[Taro Toporific]

also, quickie, if you have a word, with a similar, translation to that which appears in already published language books, is that a breach of copyright laws? i mean, just how do dictionary publishers etc get round the fact that hundreds of their books contain thousands of identical or near identical entries that can be found in other books?

I would defer to Gomi Girl on this one, but basically in JAPAN --- don't worry. All the major Japanese dictionary companies rip off each others material INCLUDING the mistakes. The level of copying has got to be 20-30% among the Japanese publishers.

[gpvillamil]

I assume your dictionary file contains the English, then a space, then the Japanese. In this case, try doing a Save As from Word as "text", then read it into an Excel spreadsheet. In the Data menu is an option to convert Text to Columns - tell it to use a space as the separator and you're in business. Text parsing is a well understood problem - I'm sure there are many ways to deal with it.

I am using a Palm Tungsten T with the J-OS Japanese language input/output system and the KDIC dictionary. I have found KDIC to be much better than many of the commercial dictionary packages for Palm-OS. It also integrates with a system called Palm-Radics for Kanji radical lookup, and this makes it almost as capable as the dedicated electronic dictionaries.

KDIC uses the popular EDICT dictionary file containing 103,000 entries.

[gpvillamil]

Also, don't know if this will help, but in Word, when you hold down the Alt-key and drag to select with the mouse, it will let you select columns or irregular areas.

[GargoyleTS]

Dictionary companies don't worry about copyright except in very blatant ripping-off. Words of a language are considered public-domain and thus cannot be copyrighted. The text of a dictionary *as a whole* is what their copyright actually covers. Just beware of including material in large quantities from other sources and your frosty. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. If you are intending to publish in any way, I would consult a lawyer first to be sure. But words being public-domain is why a lot of companies lose lawsuits over copyright (and IMO why ICANN should be a division of the UN with actual enforcement and arbitration powers).

[GomiGirl]

[GomiGirl]

Dictionary companies don't worry about copyright except in very blatant ripping-off. Words of a language are considered public-domain and thus cannot be copyrighted. The text of a dictionary *as a whole* is what their copyright actually covers. Just beware of including material in large quantities from other sources and your frosty. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. If you are intending to publish in any way, I would consult a lawyer first to be sure. But words being public-domain is why a lot of companies lose lawsuits over copyright (and IMO why ICANN should be a division of the UN with actual enforcement and arbitration powers).

Sort of kinda.. certainly it is hard to copyright a language. However, most of the work in a dictionary goes into the presentation of the data and in keeping up with new words, slang etc etc. I have my master file of dictionary data under lock and key.. literally it is locked in a safe. It is the intellectual property of my company and for a software company, their intellectual property are about their only assets.

Lots of freeware stuff which is an OK start for somebody. Grab the freeware dictionaries, edit them like hell and put them together in a new and consistant presentation package and voila - you have what can be considered original material.

Consistency and usability is the key.

Now enough of the lessons as I am giving away all of the family secrets.

[kotatsuneko]

cheers for the word info, ill try that this afternoon, that will help a lot i hope it works!!!

the format i have at present is:

english japanese in romaji

when i approach a publisher ill have to request some staff or possibly the wife to do a middle entry in kanji / kana so i guess ill need 4 columns or possibly the kanji under the kana? i would like to have both if possible..

that clie does look nice, what is currently the best of the pocket pcs out there?

this is gonna be boring, but thought id clear up what ive been trying to do and i didnt make it clear in the original post:

the project i have been working on is to get a book in print, and for there to be a way to purchase it for palm/pocket pc usage..

i started studying japanese around the time i met my wife, after a good 7 years of avoiding various college courses - my own stupid fault there..

she gave me some berlitz books, which i liked, but wanted more, so would venture down to charing cross road to see what was available

at the time i was a rather acomplished shoplifter, something i would do for pleasure and financial gain, so over a period of 3 years or so , lifted a good 40 or so books on "how to learn japanese" and dictionaries etc

the reason i kept nicking more and more books was, that in each i would find some good info, but for the most part, they were inaccessible, boring and bound the reader with language that would in my view hinder rather than help them..

so i began highlighting the good parts of each book, and later writing it down on paper, try to make it more natural or changing some parts, then inputting it into a series of files

apart from a couple of dictionaries, which i havent had time to input the data from yet, all this info resides in a set of reworked files , whose progress is a whole other story

with this data, is merged vocab and phrases from the wife, and various japanese people i have worked with over the years..

i wanted this finished years ago, but what with irregular working hours, a busy social life, being married etc never got round to finishing it off, tho i did use a good 7 months of free time at work (maybe half the working day in all) to sort and debug the texts...

i know someone, a very talented person who used to work for the daiwa foundation in london, who had a book on business japanese published by hugo, but dont want to approach him for advice till i have something i consider worth presenting , for advice..

basically, the book will work on several levels, initially, it should help a complete newbie to japan/japanese to survive, and not be scared of the language, then at their own pace they should be able to pick up different levels of politeness/formality and at their own pace build their own vocabulary and use of language according to what they are comfortable with..

the reason why i mentioned using a pda is, i thought the best way to see if the guide is ready, would be to carry it around with me, practically only possible on a pda as i cant afford a print run of 1, and see what parts work well, and what needs work doing..

the thing is as much for me, and the large number of people i have met in the games / anime circles who have always thought japanese is an impossible language to learn

i dont want to and will not rip of material en masse, that just doesnt work for me, i consider each new entry on its merits of usability and practicality god knows if i will ever make any money out of it, but if i can enjoy and use it, and if some people buy or steal it and find it opens some doors , and arent bored by it then ill be very bloody happy indeed!

thanks for all the advice!

[kotatsuneko]

hey GP ! :P that word thing, the alt works a treat, but when i try to paste to a column, it fills all the colums with the text.. any idea how to have say 3 columns, that i can paste text into independantly, as in have my first column as english, the second column blank for kana/kanji and the third for romaji?

i would swallow for that info ^^

chucking the data in excel looks good, dont know how to use it tho... it sure does look more manageable than in word.. i couldnt figure out where to put the info to use space as the seperator and it bangs on about only being able to convert one cell at a time..

shit being able to shift the data around at all is inspiring.... !! really really, thank you dude!!!

[kotatsuneko]

ps did i tell you that you guys are amazing today ?

LEGENDS!

but seriously, you lot are fookin kewl... a dolt like me really appreciates it man..

if i had a camberwell carrot, you lot would get da first tug ^^

[GomiGirl]

There is no way you would fit all your data on a PDA. All PDA and electronic dictionaries are severely cut down as there are memory limitations of small devices. My company has both PDA and on-line dictionaries so I can tell you this as fact.

You will need to carry a heap of data cards around. But it good for demo purposes.

Oh and Kots.. shoplifting????

[kotatsuneko]

damn, i may need to rethink things..

shoplifting, can be a good skill to learn, i used to make a heap of cash nicking textbooks and selling them to uni students, that paid for a pretty good social life for a long time

far less risk than dealing in things like ebony cards, and banging out net bank accounts that some of my peers make a living doing..

really, it was a juvenile skill i had picked up, and honed pretty well, throughout a good decade or so i was never caught, nor even tailed by in store security, no crim record, even when i did large stuff, like warehouses etc..

but i resolved to stop on moving here, and stop i have, that part of my life was fun and profitable, but essentially rather stupid, and i wont go back to it, i have no need to anymore really..

stealing from corps / banks - good, murder, rape , stealing an individuals belongings - bad imho and when it comes down to it, our own opinions are what matter right?

[gpvillamil]

hey GP ! :P that word thing, the alt works a treat, but when i try to paste to a column, it fills all the colums with the text.. any idea how to have say 3 columns, that i can paste text into independantly, as in have my first column as english, the second column blank for kana/kanji and the third for romaji?

i would swallow for that info ^^

chucking the data in excel looks good, dont know how to use it tho... it sure does look more manageable than in word.. i couldnt figure out where to put the info to use space as the seperator and it bangs on about only being able to convert one cell at a time..

shit being able to shift the data around at all is inspiring.... !! really really, thank you dude!!!

I really suggest you manage the dictionary in Excel, it will make it much easier to sort/slice/dice.

As for the delimiter... save your data as a text file. Open it in Excel. All the data should be in one column. Select the column by clicking on its header (where the letters A, B, C, etc. are). Go to Data Menu. Select Text to Columns... Choose "Delimited" as the option. Go to the next screen. On the next screen, check the tick box for "spaces" as a delimiter. Go to the next screen (which you can ignore, probably). You should be able to finish at the next screen, and Excel will parse your data into separate columns.

Once you have a working version of the dictionary file in Excel, you can cut and paste it back into Word into whatever format you want. I'd suggest sorting it on the English, and making one copy, sorting into Japanese and making another. If you want to get fancy you could reverse the words as well and allow searching on word endings.

You can get packages for Palm OS that will read Word & Excel files in their native format, so you can carry around and edit the exact same file that you are working with on your PC.

I use a 128MB card on my PDA to hold my dictionary files. Basically I have several versions of EDICT, including the complete file indexed on Japanese (romaji) and English. I also have subsets (about 60,000) indexed on kana and kanji. J-OS can store its fonts on the memory card as well, so I get nice big Kanji. However, as GGirl has pointed out, having such large dictionaries can be a hindrance - having to sort through multiple definitions before coming across the right one.

Sharp makes Linux based PDAs with keyboards that are nice as well, though I haven't worked with them. It would be lovely to work with a Psion/Symbian PDA - that is a great system. Unfortunately a little hard to come by nowadays.

The work you are doing sounds interesting. Most dictionary files I've come across are limited because they don't work well with verb conjugations. Also lack info on sentence patterns and colloquial usage.

GGirl, maybe TangoTown is different?

You may want to look into the book by Jay Rubin called "Making Sense of Japanese" (with the ultimate explanation of "wa" vs "ga") and the various handbooks by Naoko Chino on sentence patterns, particles and verbs. I would love to have some kind of online version of those.

Please don't steal. It will forever taint your work if you base it on theft. Achieve a certain moral equilibrium and the world will gladly give you what you need.

[kotatsuneko]

thanks again GP for that detailed advice!

once again, i didnt make myself or the purpose clear enough i guess..

i only want to make enough money, if possible to show the wife and myself it was worth it..

really, i'd be very happy for a potential publisher to share profits to the authors whose work i have borrowed from

apart from research done by myself, and a lot of help from the wife and various people 80% of the data came from other books , and hell yes i'd expect the publisher to come to a settlement with them and share any profits..

i just wanted a book i could learn real everyday japanese from, and it didnt / still doesnt exist, hence my arrogant but rewarding journey into creating one myself..

its about putting something out there that people can use, rather than get frustrated or bored with, a book that is relavant today and 10 years later.. the only work i have done, apart from said research almost every day is to compile the good parts that others have compiled and published, but that were hidden in boring, unhelpful tomes..

do you catch my drift ?

[GomiGirl]

The work you are doing sounds interesting. Most dictionary files I've come across are limited because they don't work well with verb conjugations. Also lack info on sentence patterns and colloquial usage.

GGirl, maybe TangoTown is different?

Absolutely.. if you enter a verb in any form it will break it down to the dictionary form and then give you the conjugation explaination of the original entry. eg.. ikimashita (plain past tense of iku - to go)

For Kanji you are given the base kanji with all of the codes, readings etc and then pages and pages of combinations using that kanji.

Example sentences for everything.

Pages and pages of slang. More phrases for "real life" siteuations than you can point a stick at .. plus I am working on a huge update with lots more phrases.

I am working on some dialect stuff but it is very subjective.

[Naniwan Kid]

I have refered to this site every so often......whether or not it helps, it is kind of interesting...

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/afaq.html

[kotatsuneko]

btw, when i have all the text sorted and tidy, in excel, how do i go about avoiding the previous hassles, putting it into word?

is there some way i can set up a divider between 3 columns? and paste into them? cos when i tried columns before, the paste just filled all three columns ...

i'd love to see GG's app.,.. kinda suprised i havent seen it on tv or anything..

[GomiGirl]

i'd love to see GG's app.,.. kinda suprised i havent seen it on tv or anything..

Desktop Demo For the real one just mail that link to your phone and sign up. Easy. You can't see the full site from your desktop as it is a mobile phone site.

Metropolis article

The site has quite a few new features since we launched a year ago.

We have also been covered by the Mainichi, Hiragana Times, InterFM, Wireless Watch Japan, Japan Inc and a few others.

Don't worry I have some pretty hefty security so that people can't steal the data!!

[kotatsuneko]

ta for the links..

really, its such a simple, usable brilliant idea.. maybe get thane or someone using it on tv or something?

as for your data, glad its safe.,. ive worked on various huge projects, some ongoing and for me, my concern is having a large team working on something and making sure stuff doesnt get leaked before its ready.. as it lessons the impact

as for biz stuff, hey thats your livelihood! ever thought of licencing it to the dutch? or the usa? or even back to oz? big markets there for your app i would think, when and if they ever catch up with the mobile systems here..

[GomiGirl]

really, its such a simple, usable brilliant idea.. maybe get thane or someone using it on tv or something?

If anybody knows Thane I would be happy to!!

We have a native Japanese mode for people learning English. Still perfecting it though.

[Taro Toporific]

[If anybody knows Thane I would be happy to!!

....
http://www.tbs.co.jp/karakuritv/oubo/oubosp.html
The foreginers living in Japan! Why don't you learn Japanese with Thane Camus?

Karakuri TV is looking for a foreginers who can particiapte in Funniest Language School.....

[GomiGirl]

This sounds like a job for Rob Pongi!!! He is the funniest Foreigner we all know!!!

[kotatsuneko]

i can get the info over to excel, but it doesnt seem very easy at all to edit the text once its there -- the formatting in the text is all off due to being transferred from 3 different versions of word over the years

due to the way spacing is showed here, i cant really show you here what the text looks like, but there is currently 2 sets of text, and the spacing between each set is different every few lines

i managed to increase the space between text in excel, but when i tried to paste it into word, and use columns to separate it, the pasted text simply filled up all 3 columns..

this is starting to drive me crazy.. is there any way to have a column continue to different pages, so if i paste text to column 1, it will fill only that space, and continue to the next page when it spills over, rather than fill the next column on the next page?

that language skool normally has 3 or 4 contestants, so Pongi tono should bring along Gai, Cs and the 2 GG's imho ^^

[kotatsuneko]

thanks to you guys baby sitting me, i managed to find a solution!!!

heres how i did it..

saved the info as a txt file, imported it into TextPad *which also has a japanese version available and is worth the reg fee btw..*

used the same alt - highlight trick you showed me earlier and highlighted the english set

opened a new excel file, and clicked on the A cell and dragged it to make it nice and wide, pasted english data there

dragged the B cell to make room for kana/ kanji entries

repeated the first steps for the romaji setting..

wow! this is so much easier! i had seen people work with excel for text before, notably cataloging arcade flyers and mod/spc files but never quite figured why...

this is so cool, as i guess the way an excel file works, i wont lose formatting when office 2003 comes out, its easier to look at, and when i approach a publisher, i wont have to look at hours of formatting being discarded as they will i guess just take the files and use their own formatting..

SERIOUSLY, THANKS TO YOU LOT FOR MAKING MY LIFE SO MUCH EASIER!!!!!!!

if youre ever in sapporo, a beer is coming your way!

[gpvillamil]

Great! Glad that helped. I'll collect on that beer sometime soon!

[kotatsuneko]

GP! man, i really can't thank you enough for that help!

i also figured out today, that when pasting large amounts of txt into excel, rather than do it within a cell and cause it to crash (they really expect people to pay for this crap?) you can avoid it crashing by highlighting the cells letter at the top and pasting that way..

hopefully office 03 will be worth the licence fee this time round..

now if i could just figure out why dreamweaver crashes all the time.. dunno why it cant handle a bookmark htm.. even when they are as small as 200k.. thats nothing to my main links file of 1.6 megs...

anyhow, seriously you've really made my life much easier and i've got a lot more interest in this project since thanks to you i can shift the data around that much easier...

erm, well, CHEERS!!!!

[kotatsuneko]

btw GG, thane has a new english show, think it runs on sunday nights after the avex trax show or is it the R show? its on around 2am i thunk.. not long, just thane taking a word and explaining its various usages..

reversing your app to japanese - english... genius! i really think with the right promo you could be FUCKING RICH.. .. well you probably are now, but how about EVEN RICHER?!

go gg ^^

[cstaylor]

Karakuri TV is looking for a foreginers who can particiapte in Funniest Language School.....

You couldn't pay me enough to appear on that Amos & Andy show... a much better show is "Can you speak English" with Pac-kun.

[kamome]

Kots asked earlier on about how dictionaries and other similar texts bypass the copyright laws.

In the US, copyright laws are meant to protect the expression of ideas, not the iteration of facts. That's why no one can copyright the information in a phone book, for example, since someone's phone number is a fact. However, if someone came up with an interesting way to present that factual information--say with unique graphics or a new cross referencing system, that presentation would be protectable through copyright. By the same token, GG's TangoTown presents Japanese words and translations in a unique way. The unique presentation of those words can't be copied without fear of legal action.

Kots--you can plagiarize definitions to a certain extent, but their presentation should be uniquely your own. From what little I know, it sounds like you're ok re: US copyright laws. Japanese laws, I have no clue.