The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English/Japanese

The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English/Japanese can be considered the grown-up version of the Kotoba Tsukaikata Ejiten. Whereas the latter is aimed at children and covers elementary concepts like games, colours and simple motor actions The Oxford Picture Dictionary covers more complex vocabulary like timezones, cuts of meat and crimes.

The Oxford tome is aimed at adult Japanese students of English (as one less-than-perspicacious Amazon reviewer discovered to his chagrin) and as with many texts aimed at Japanese learners it contains Japanese translations in addition to English, but this is exactly what makes it so useful to students of Japanese. However this is no book for beginners  - you will need to be able to read kanji or at least be proficient in the use of an electronic dictionary.

The Picture Dictionary contains 168 pages of pictures and scenes labeled in English and Japanese, covering 3600 words of core vocabulary from the following thematic units:

• Everyday Language
• People
• Housing
• Food
• Clothing
• Health
• Community
• Transportation
• Areas of Study
• Plants and Animals
• Work
• Recreation

The book is useful as a means of filling in those gaps in your vocabulary which exist because you didn't grow up learning Japanese (if you did, what are you doing here?). For example, you may know the Japanese for shark and octopus, but what about seahorse or ray?

Beyond simple nouns the OPD shines when it comes to more abstract, or simply more complex concepts - can you say "onto the highway"?

The thematic categorisation makes using the dictionary very straightforward. Want to talk shoes? Page 68 has everything from pumps パンプズ　to shoelaces 靴ひも。Doing home repairs? See page 150 for tape measures 巻き尺 and drill bits きり先. The pictures are drawn in a variety of styles and are very easy to understand. Some times too easy. The guy with mumps on page 79 brought back very bad childhood memories. And though in the majority of cases the pictures are self-explanatory, having the English is a big help. For example, a picture of a person in a suit standing in front of the United States Capitol building is insufficient - you need the words to remove the ambiguity:

下院                                The House of Representatives
下院女性議員／下院議員　congresswoman/congressman
上院　                             The Senate
上院議員　                       senator

The down side?　The book is designed for Japanese people learning English, specifically American English, so the  pictures are all Americancentric - you won't find the vocab for a lot of Japanese objects but you will be able to talk about things Western. I noted a little political correctness too - page 22 shows a guy who in Japanese is 太っている (fat) but the English label is merely "heavyset" - there is no "fat" or "obese" or even just "overweight". And there is no furigana, so be prepared to invest some time looking up the readings for a lot of the words.

The Oxford Picture Dictionary: English/Japanese   
Norma Shapiro and Jamie Adelson-Goldstein
Oxford University Press, 1998

Pros:       Extensive, detailed, easy to use.
Cons:      Requires a certain level of kanji ability. Americancentric.
Overall:  An excellent resource for intermediate learners.

Amazon (Japan)
Amazon (US)

Comments

[Coal]

I have the same dictionary and would pretty much agree with everything you said. There's a few of them about - the one at work is about 600 pages and very dated, and they all have English AND Japanese but it always seems to be more for the convenience of both English speakers and Japanese speakers rather than as a foreign language aid.

[Crusoe]

Looks good, although that first comment on Amazon gives one pause (the picture shows an elephant's trunk with the word "trunk" in English and "胴体" in Japanese - which means "main part of the body" instead of "鼻" meaning "nose". Still, errors like that are probably few and far between and easy for a native English speaker to catch during the learning process (assuming you're using a dictionary).

The other oversight pointed out had to do with the word "nurse", as in "nurse a baby" (赤ちゃんの世話をする). The intransitive usage, ie. "a baby nurses at its mothers breast" (授乳する) isn't mentioned, which led the reviewer to a bit of confusion. Also, "breastfeed" as the commonly accepted meaning of "nurse" is primarily American usage (in Australia, and maybe elsewhere, it just means "take care of"), so there are definitely some usage issues to be aware of.

[Will Jasprizza]

Crusoe

Well spotted! I have to confess I noticed the 胴体／trunk mistake a few months ago. Once a week I teach Japanese to a primary school girl who just moved here from China. I was using the Picture Dictionary and going through the animal names when I saw the mistake and then promptly forgot about it. Having checked out that Amazon review you mentioned I can see that there are a number of mistakes, or at least ambiguities. Most are along the lines of providing one translation when there are actually two (or more) common meanings but there are some out and out mistakes.

On page 94 illustration D shows a person bottle feeding a baby. The description is feed/授乳する. Feed can apply to both breastfeeding and bottlefeeding, so the editors really should have made the distinction clear in English. The Japanese is similarly ambiguous - 授乳 applies to both cases. (哺乳瓶で赤ちゃんに)ミルクをあげている or simply 人工栄養 should have been used.

Illustration C shows a woman with a Janet Jackson style bra breastfeeding a child (presumably her own). The English term "nurse" is offered. As an Aussie I can say that in my small nation the word "nurse" more generally carries the connotation of "hold" or "comfort". You might say "she's nursing at the moment" to describe how a mother is feeding her child but I reckon that "breastfeed" is way more common than "nurse". In any event the Japanese, which is what we are concerned with, is dodgy. The woman clearly has her breast in the child's mouth which in Japanese would be おっぱいをあげる　(lit.　give the boob/tit) or 母乳をやる(lit. give the mother breast)

Illustration G is also wrong. The Japanese word given for "pick up" is 迎えに行く as in "I'll pick you up from the station". The correct expression is 抱き上げる.

Looks like it might pay to go through the parts of the book I have yet to read (breast feeding not a feature of my day-to-day schedule) and do a quick quality control before firing off an email to OUP.

I mentioned in the original post that some of the errors stemmed from political correctness. I think prudishness is also to blame. A quick look at the index reveals that the words "penis", "vagina" and "pubic hair" are missing. The words "buttocks" and "breast" are included, but both are labelled on clothed figures in such a way as to be unclear if not simply confusing. If a Japanese person learning English from the Picture Dictionary has a problem with their gallbladder they can explain it to a doctor, but heaven help them if they get crabs.

[Amy]

Interesting. I've been using the Canadian version of this picture dictionary (without Japanese translation) for my classes for years and really find it useful. While I was aware that there is a version with Japanese translations, I'd never considered using in to study Japanese. I may have to pick up a copy (thanks for pointing out the mistakes).
Amy
PS, Where I'm from, that "Janet Jackson style bra" is called a "nursing bra".

[Will Jasprizza]

You mean there is a proper name for them ;-)

And in Japanese, via Eijiro:

nursing bra : 授乳用｛じゅにゅう よう｝のブラジャー
nursing brassiere : 授乳用｛じゅにゅう よう｝ブラジャー

[helga]

Hi! My graduation paper based of english phraseology demanded much attention on different dictionaries. http://rapid4me.com/?q=dictionary heloed me a lot, and I didn't have to spend days and nights in the library. Hope you'll find these dictionaries useful too.

[Nursing Tank]

Thank you for the post, it's much appreciated!

[Padded nursing bras]

Looks cool, thanks for sharing.
Martina