JEDict for Mac

A few comments. First, this software should be (more) free. It's for the most part merely an interface for the EDICT/KanjiDic volunteer projects. You have to pay more to access other volunteer projects such as the example sentences, and specialty dictionaries such as the one on Buddhism. I can understand that Sergey might want to charge for access to pay dictionaries such as Eijiro. But he should not charge for access to dictionaries that are compiled by volunteer effort. Second, JEDict is updated so rarely (it's been more than a year since the last update), that it desperately needs a dictionary-update feature. New versions of EDICT, the main dictionary that JEDict uses, are made available nightly--often with hundreds of improvements made in a single day. The version of EDICT currently available in JEDict 4.7 is now woefully out-of-date. For instance, it was compiled before the Japanese tsunami on Mar. 11, 2011, after which HUGE efforts were made to improve EDICT's coverage of disaster terminology for tsunamis, nuclear reactors, etc. There needs to be a way to auto-update the dictionaries. Kotoba! for iOS is now a far better (and completely free) alternative than JEDICT.

Still the best Japanese-English dictionary for the Mac…but I'm sad to say this is mostly due to the lack of any viable alternative. While JEDict is packed with useful functionality, the user interface is quite a mess, and it's really starting to look old and broken compared to all the other apps I use on a regular basis. Lately I've taken to simply using the built-in Dictionary app in OS X, which actually has very good Japanese-English dictionary (and an excellent Japanese-only dictionary, if you can read enough Japanese to use it), and I only turn to JEDict when I need some feature other than looking up words (like looking up individual characters, or compiling a list of words via the userdict). I understand this is the work of a single developer who most likely has a day job or some other full-time occupation, and I think he's done us all a great service by at least maintaining it in a mostly-working state through all these years and major OS upgrades. But this app needs a complete teardown and redesign of the entire user interface, and I think it's going to take at least one professional UI/UX designer to pull it off. And unfortunately I also think this is such a niche product that Mr. Kurkin can't really be expected to hire a pro to sort this out properly. What I'd really like to see is a Mac version of the excellent "Japanese" iPhone app (by "codefromtokyo"), which comes awfully close to matching most of JEDict's functionality, and does so with a fantastic, modern UI that is a pleasure to use (something I really can't say about JEDict). For the time being, I'll be sticking with JEDict, since it's still the best tool (despite its many shortcomings). But I really hope to see a better alternative, someday.

Great app and makes searches and cross-references easy. Was a huge aid when doing Japanese in university and it's even better now.

Any Mac user who knows anything about Japanese knows that this is the best Japanese-English dictionary for the Mac, period. I've been using it since 2004; I've tried every other one that has been released since then, and none of them come anywhere close to JEDict. Apple's Dictionary in OS X 10.5 actually has several Japanese-related dictionaries that are also quite excellent, and I recommend using those as well, but anyone who is at all serious about studying the language should really have JEDict too. I use both (and a handheld electronic one too), and they complement each other pretty well. By the way, the browser feature is actually extremely useful if you take the time to learn why it was included in a dictionary. Try loading up any Japanese web page, select some text on the page, and the sidebar pops out with translations and definitions. And it's hardly "bloat"; WebKit views (i.e. the Safari engine) are provided by the OS, and very easily added to any Mac OS X application.

Edict, EIJIRO and EPWING support makes this the best and most useful japanese dictionary around. Sincere thanks to the author. (and registration when I gather some coins!)