Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Hey Editor (Whom I suspect is Jeremy; because if it were Martin, I would have never seen the note because there would have been 2000 lines of Martin's life story there. Which I would have been compelled to read):

I think its pretty obvious what the Canon Wordtank G-50 does. Its explained in plain Japanese right there on the datasheet. Tell you what: I'll bring the box over to you when it comes and you can read that.

Philistines.

The Canon Wordtank G-50 is the latest model of Japanese-English-Japanese electronic dictionaries from Canon. Of all the brands of J-E electronic dictionaries, (Sharp, Seiko, Casio, etc) Canon models have the reputation of being the easiest for native English speakers to use (opposed to native Japanese speakers). All the little lookup features work in both directions, and other nicities such as an English manual and English system messages are present. So thats why I chose Canon. As far as the particular model, I chose it from a short-list of the G-50, the IDF-3000 and the IDF-4600. Apparently, Canon has started a new series of dictionaries. The 4600 is basically an updated version of the 3000.

So here are the specifics:
The G-50 has 13112 kanji entries, compared to the 4600 and 3000's 6368

The G-50 has a 230000 word Japanese dictionary compared to the 4600's 230000 and the 3000's 118000

The G-50 has an English-English Dictionary and Thesaurus like the 4600 but unlike the 3000

The G-50 has 97000 Japanese to English entries compared with the 4600's 80000 and the 3000's 79000

The G-50 has 460000 English to Japanese entries compared to the 4600's 95000 and the 3000's 128000

The G-50 has 52500 katakana entries compared to the 4600's 16000 and the 3000's zero

So since the 3000 was a little outdated, and the G-50 was actually a little bit cheaper than the 4600 with the case included I went with the G-50. Of course, since its a graduation gift, price wasnt too much of a factor. And I never intend to buy another one of these unless the Japanese decide to mix things up a little and completely overhaul their language, so I figured this is one of those things in life you want to go ahead and pay a little extra and get the most recent version of.

There are also a couple improvements in kanji searching in the G-50. Looking for a specific kanji can be a real pain in the ass. And finally, there is a new feature only in this model of dictionary. There are about 2-2.5 kiloKanji that can be animated to show you the proper stroke order. Which is damn cool.

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