Welcome to the Kieffer International Online Bookstore! We now offer useful books for Japanese-English translation and advanced study in association with Amazon.com.

Books for General Translation


Amazon Japan 

Amazon USA

Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary (5th edition)

This is an essential companion for the student of Japanese. This dictionary includes 230,000 entry words and compounds and 250,000 example sentences. This dictionary goes above and beyond most general-use dictionaries by including a fair selection of technical terms as well. To top it off, this dictionary includes the katakana names of famous world figures, places, and works of art as well as the names of ministries and agencies in the Japanese government. This is a dictionary that no serious student of Japanese should be without.
Currently, the best prices are available from Amazon Japan, but they do not ship overseas.

Available in CD-ROM and hardcover versions.


Amazon Japan


CD-ROM with both J-E and E-J versions

Kenkyusha's New English-Japanese Dictionary (6th edition)

This dictionary can serve as a useful reference to the student of Japanese. It allows double-look up of terms if you are looking for just that right word when it cannot be found in any other resources. No other E-J dictionary is in the same league as this reference. It contains 260,000 headwords, making it a superior resource. Hardcover.
Available in CD-ROM version and hardcover versions, but they may not be available overseas. (As of this writing, the book is available overseas, but the CD-ROM is not.)


Amazon Japan


Amazon USA

New Japanese-English Character Dictionary

The New Japanese-English Character Dictionary features an easy-to-use, quick lookup system for looking up kanji characters using the pattern and has indexes for lookup by the character's reading and stroke count. Moreover, compound examples are not limited to compounds where the kanji character appears first. In addition to a core meaning, this dictionary also provides the wide range of diverse meanings for each character. This is useful if you need to infer the meaning of a certain compound which is not listed in any dictionary. This is also a tremendous aid for gaining a complete grasp of a kanji character and its compounds.

This dictionary contains 4421 entry characters, including 834 cross-reference characters. Although this is less than the number of characters in Nelson's Dictionary, this should more than suffice for the student of Japanese because as you progress in your studies, your next step would be to graduate to use of a kan-wa jiten (kanji character-Japanese dictionary) having at least 10,000 characters.
Hardcover. 1992 pages.

For advanced users, the CD-ROM Japanese dictionaries below (Kojien and Daijirin) enable look up of kanji (thus serving as a kan-wa jiten) in addition to regular word compounds.


Books for Technical Translation
Go Top


Kojien (DVD)


Daijirin (CD)

Kojien 6th Edition DVD-ROM and Daijirin (3rd Edition) CD-ROM

Kojien is considered the authoritative reference in Japanese. This DVD-ROM version contains all 240,000 entries from the hardback version (6th edition). This dictionary also enables kanji lookup for doubling as a kan-wa jiten (kanji-Japanese dictionary). As of this writing, it is available for overseas shipping from Amazon Japan.

Daijirin is also 238,000 entries and over 2,000 illustrations. It is comparable to Kojien, and some users prefer its layout and style. It also enables kanji lookup. As of this writing, it is not available for overseas shipping.


Eijiro (CD)

Eijiro 4th Edition

Admittedly, translators have mixed feelings about Eijiro.
On the one hand, it is not even considered a dictionary by some, but more of a glossary since it only lists words and their equivalents, with no hint as to their usage. As a result, if a translator decides to use Eijiro, it is strongly recommended that he or she double-check the exact meaning of the term used. We strongly feel that responsible usage of Eijiro requires this "double-lookup".
Once the dictionary is installed to your hard drive, entries can be added and edited using the PDIC software.
The major advantage of Eijiro is its sheer volume because it contains terms that can often be found nowhere else. This 4th Edition of Eijiro contains an amazing 1.66 million entries. As of this writing, it is not available for overseas shipping.


Amazon Japan

Amazon USA

Microsoft Press Computer Dictionary (5th Edition)

Technical translators in the computer field constantly need to stay up-to-date in this rapidly changing field. Windows-based applications abound for all kinds of equipment, forcing the translator to be proficient in the latest Microsoft and computer lingo.

The Microsoft® Computer Dictionary is perhaps the most authoritative (and one of the newest) computer dictionaries. It is also easy to use and extensively illustrated. This dictionary contains more than 10,000 entries. Available at a discount through Amazon.com.


Amazon Japan

Amazon USA

The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (3rd Edition)

In manuals for computer-related products, inconsistency reigns. It sometimes seems like each manual writer has his or her own style. Under these conditions, the task of the translator does not lie simply in putting the material of one language into another. He must also shape the translated product into a high-quality, proficient piece of work in the target language. This is essential for producing value-added translation.

The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications is an invaluable reference for producing manuals for computer-related products, especially software documentation. Originally designed as a style guide for writers at Microsoft, it describes the correct use of terminology and deals with style issues. This book is strongly recommended for translators in the computer field, and others will probably find it useful as well. Available at a discount from Amazon.com.


Amazon Japan

Amazon USA

Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (3rd Edition)

Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (3rd Edition) is the perfect companion and complements the Microsoft style guide above. Content starts from the basics of writing mechanics and then delves into the specific points for each type of technical writing style. This guide covers internationalization guidelines used to simplify translation into other languages and improve clarity for non-native English speakers for producing high-quality tec
hnical writing in computer-related publications.



Amazon Japan

Amazon USA

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (7th Edition)

To a J-E technical translator, an English reference for source material can be a tremendous aid for understanding the material and putting it into English. Textbooks, manuals of similar devices, dictionaries, and other references are often all brought into play to produce high-quality work.

This is where the The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms comes onto the scene. This dictionary contains 105,000 terms covering over 100 fields, from acoustics to zoology. Nothing can be more valuable to a translator than to have a wide range of technical information available in a quick, easy-to-use reference like this dictionary offers. It can be useful to anyone who has to keep up with developments in a variety of technical fields. Hardcover.

 




Do you have any suggestions for useful books for Japanese study or translation? Your contributions are also welcome. Send your comments to


| Home | Technical Translation | Business Translation | Website Translation | Translation Tools | Bookstore | Contact Us |

© Copyright 2009 Kieffer International, Inc. All Right Reserved.
Books and other references for Japanese - English translation