The Compact Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: Great but ultimately frustrating!
Review: A great dictionary along the lines of the red Nelson classic. However, even though we all have the red Nelson for completeness/nostalgia/history's sake, Nelson itself has been put to shame in the recent past by dictionaries like the Spahn-Hadamitzky yellow one - with more characters and a far easier way of looking things up. This little Nelson shares the good features of the big one, but (and a big but) it is ultimately frustrating. This is because after Spahn - Hadamtizky, having to trawl through the first kanji is very annoying when there is a much easier one in another position you know you could have used. It still suffers from what another reader called the 'baroque' radical classifiction (try remembering where the normally 3 stroke 'snail' radical for movement is - as in shuu for week - unless you remember that it is buried near the back in an archaic character count/form) Add to this the most frustrating thing - very soon you will need to find characters that are not in the semi-official 3000 or so in the book - and then you are stuck (I can guarantee this - try reading even Mishima who died in the 1970s - let alone Soseki or Basho or the Manyoshu - with only the official kanji) . Ultimately frustrating - pay the extra 10 or 20 dollars (even if you are a struggling student) for the big Nelson or Spahn - Hadamitzky if you are a serious student, otherwise I can guarantee you will rue the false economy when you need to trade up!

Rating:
Summary: Portable character dictionary good for general use
Review: I used the old (red hardback, ISBN 0804819653) Nelson's for years, until this one came out. I much prefer the old, red Nelson's to the new blue hardback Nelson's (ISBN 0804820368). See the review of the new blue hardback on Amazon for a good discussion of its shortcomings. However, this Compact Nelson's is an improvement over both due to its portability and ease of use.

I have been translating Japanese to English for 10 years now, and I have found the red Nelson's to be sufficient for my character needs. Mind you, I work primarily with medical translation and military technology, so I do not read a lot of Japanese literature by Mishima or others which seem to have difficult characters according to another reviewer. Over the past two years I have used the Compact Nelson's and not had any problems.

If you need to look up characters you cannot find in Compact Nelson's, you may want to get a Japanese-Japanese character dictionary, such as the 10,000 character _JIS Kanji Jiten_. That one should include Chinese characters as well.

Other reviewers mentioned difficulty looking up characters using the original radical look-up in Nelson's. After using the radicals for a while you get used to them. It certainly helps to read the instructions on how to look up characters. I also translate Chinese and use Chinese dictionaries from both Taiwan and the mainland. There are many different radical look-up systems but they do not take too long to get used to. If you have difficulty you may want to look more closely at the character to make sure you are looking up the right radical.

Another reviewer mentioned some archaic words in Nelson's. Well, Nelson's is not designed to be used as a Japanese-English dictionary. For that purpose you may want to get Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary (ISBN 4767420253).

Rating:
Summary: Good portable resource
Review: Nelson's has been the standard for English-language Kanji Dictionaries for some time now. One of the reasons might be its similarity to Japanese-language Kanji Dictionaries, both in its look-up system and sheer number of characters.

And this is perhaps its strongest aspect: even though this is the abridged version of this dictionary, the 3,000 some-odd characters compares, for example, to the UN-abridged NTC's. And of course, the unabriged Nelson's 7000+ characters is nearly exhaustive. There is little in the way of stroke order or usage information, but for sheer number of entries, it is really only rivalled by Japanese-language Kanji Dictionaries.

The look-up system can be cryptic at times...but this shouldn't be surprising. Welcome to the world of Kanji. What is intuitive for one person is mind-boggling for another. The addition of the Universal Radical Index proves to be helpful in most instances when you just can't figure out which radical that character is listed under. Most instances.

I've been using this dictionary for a couple of years now, mostly translating contemporary literature, and have had little need for any other Kanji dictionary. It isn't perfect, but it is a great resource. Take this on the road with you, and keep the unabriged Nelson's at home and you can't go wrong.

If this doesn't do it for you, I guess it's time to buy Morohashi's Dai Kan-wa Jiten, which has some 50,000 characters and is so authoritative it has been translated into Chinese.