Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group

Links: [WWWJDIC] [EDRDG Wiki] [JMDictDB] [Nihongo ftp server] [Dictionary Licence] [Donations]

Introduction

The Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group was established in 2000 within the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, with the following objectives:

the compilation of electronic dictionaries;
to carry out research and development in applied computational linguistics with particular emphasis on computer lexicography.

With Jim's retirement from Monash the Group is now independent of Monash and is effectively Jim and collaborators around the world.

The Group is currently the home of the "EDICT Project" which has been operating for many years, and which has led to the compilation of a number of major Japanese-English dictionary files. The copyright for these files has been assigned to the Group.

The major ongoing projects of the Group are:

the JMdict/EDICT Japanese-English Electronic Dictionary database.
the ENAMDICT/JMnedict Japanese Proper Names Electronic Dictionary database.
the JMDictDB online database now being used to maintain JMdict/EDICT.
the KANJIDIC/KANJIDIC2 Kanji Information databases.
the WWWJDIC dictionary server
the KRADFILE/RADKFILE database of visual kanji elements, as used by the WWWJDIC server and other systems.

In addition, the Group is closely associated with the Tanaka Corpus of parallel Japanese-English sentence pairs.

Usage of the Dictionary Files.

In March 2000, Jim Breen assigned ownership of the copyright of the dictionary files assembled, coordinated and edited by him to the Group, on the understanding that the Group will foster the development of the dictionary files, and will utilize all monies received for use of the files for the further development of the files, and for research into computer lexicography and electronic dictionaries. Hitherto the files were freely available for non-commercial use, and restricted from commercial exploitation.

Following a period during which the files were available for commercial use on payment of a negotiated royalty, in February 2003 it was decided to make the files more freely available for use, both commercial and non-commercial, subject to a number of conditions mainly to ensure adequate and appropriate acknowledgement.

At the same time, users of the files who are successful in using or incorporating the files in a commercial product or service are requested to make a donation to the Group commensurate with the benefits they receive from the files. These donations are used to fund the maintenance and development of the files and the related activities of the Group.