Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 13(1), 2023. ISSN: 2232-3317, http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ DOI: 10.4312/ala.13.1.109-117 Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (=Comprehensive Japanese-German Dictionary) Band 3 O — Z (2510 pp.). München: IUDICIUM Verlag. Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Chikako.ShigemoriBucar@ff.uni-lj.si Book review 1 Introduction This is a review of a new great publication by the Munich publisher IUDICIUM, and particularly addresses the readers in Slovenia and neighboring countries. The new concise bilingual dictionary does not only offer word searches, but it may also be used as an excellent reference for researchers and students of Japanese Studies and East Asian Studies. In the first part, I explain the structure and content of the dictionary. The second part is a brief introduction of the role of the German language in Slovenia in recent history. In the third part, I describe the current situation with the Japanese Studies in Slovenia and their actual research activities concerning Japan. After that, I bring up several random entries of the volume and discuss them with regard to the specific situation in Slovenia. In conclusion, I point out the benefits of this new publication in the course of our future research and educational activities. 2 The dictionary The three-volume dictionary “Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch ” (hereafter GJDW) was an extremely large and long-term project organized by an excellent group of specialists in the field of Japanese studies and other related 110 Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR disciplines in Germany and Japan 1 . The last, third volume of this dictionary was published in the spring of 2022, and thus this great project was completed 2 . On December 10th, 2022, the Goethe Institute in Tokyo organized a symposium celebrating the publication3, which was accessible to a wider public through the Zoom platform. The symposium first presented valuable details of the project’s conceptualization, organization, and management. The following three short lectures discussed the dictionary compilation and dictionary use with actual examples and episodes from various standpoints. This dictionary is the largest among all currently available bilingual dictionaries of the Japanese language4 and comprises more than 130,000 entries on 7,523 pages: we can look up words and expressions which are currently in daily use in the Japanese newspapers, journals and other publications, as well as words used in literary works and everyday conversations, terminology in the fields of biology, biochemistry, computer science, zoology and botany, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, art and music, physics, law, sports, economics and finance, etc. 5 Many of the entries also contain idioms and/or neologisms with concise explanations. There are approx. 70,000 sample sentences in context, taken from newspapers, magazines, advertisements, scientific writings, and literature, all with exactly specified sources. The most notable characteristic of this dictionary is the fact that it also contains the vocabulary used in the last decades of the 19th century, namely the words which were closely connected with the rapid modernization of Japan (Stalph, 2009, p. 11). The entries in alphabetical order are shown in the Hepburn transcription system in boldface, followed by Japanese orthography (usual kanji and kana writing), the word class and other grammatical information, and related compounds and frequent idioms and/or collocations. The important characteristic of this dictionary, also explained by the chief editor in his Foreword, is the fact that special attention is directed to show “how each word lives 1 Four main editors (Jürgen Stalph, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Wofgang E. Schlecht, and Kōji Ueda), three editorial staff members, 21 contributors (writers), 9 proofreaders, and one collaborator (Stalph et al. 2022, 5-7). 2 The first volume (A – I) was published in 2009, and the second (J – N) in 2015. 3 The symposium West-Östliche Sprachbrücke – Fertigstellung des Grossen japanisch-deutschen Wörterbuchs , held at OAG Haus (German Culture Centre) in Tokyo. 4 The fifth edition of Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, published in 2003, is a volume with 2,848 pages. It contains about 130,000 entries. Retrieved from Last accessed 24. 12. 2022. 5 According to the list of fields (FACHGEBIETE ) on page 9 of Volume 3, the dictionary covers 97 separate fields, from AERO (aeronautical engineering) to ZOOL (zoology). Among them are also specifically Japanese historical and traditional fields such as IKEBANA, KABUKI, NŌ, SUMO, or religious fields such as BUDDH (Buddhism), SCHINTO (Shintoism) and ZEN (Zen Buddhism). Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch … 111 in the language”. In order to prove that each word or expression has a range of meanings and that one-to-one translation correspondence is not what we expect, the authors/contributors made use of a great variety of texts from all fields. It was intended to offer good and proper Japanese ways of expression, and on the other hand also good and proper German expressions that are usually accepted in their own language use. There is a list of sources of all example sentences and quotations at the end of Volume 3, pp. 2483-2510, from Abe Kōbō’s Moetsukita Chizu (1967) of which the German translation appeared in German in 1994, to Yū Miri’s Gōrudorasshu (1998) and Ziegenrücker’s ABC Music: Allgemeine Musiklehre (2000). Included in the list are not only works originally written in Japanese with their translations in German, but also general source materials in German and Japanese, and Japanese translations of German literature (Goethe, Kafka, Brecht, Hesse, Thomas Mann, Michael Ende, Erich Kästner, Süskind, Nossack, Enzensberger, and the Märchens of brothers Grimm), and even works in a third language which have been translated into both Japanese and German, i. e. Dickens, Poe, Nabokov, Joyce, J. Rowling, Borges, Gogol’, and Saint- Exupéry. The editor himself mentions in the Foreword that such a decision to include example sentences from translations into both languages from a third language is exceptional for this kind of dictionary editing, but the editors and contributors agreed to spotlight the “how” in language use, namely, how each word or expression lives in its own language. In fact, for researchers and students of Japanese studies and translators of Japanese literature, this dictionary is expected to become one of the important references to keep close at hand in order to search for and discover various facets of the Japanese as well as the German language, and the works of literature, and the modern histories of the East and West. 3 German language in Slovenia The Slovene people were under the rule of other nations for a long time in history. Most of the territory where the Slovenes lived was under the House of Habsburg for centuries.6 The administration in the feudal system was conducted using the German language, but the use of the Slovene language was not strictly prohibited, so the inhabitants in the region, peasants mainly, used their own language for everyday life. The first books in the Slovene language7 were published in 1550 by Primož Trubar, a protestant reformer, and the first grammar of the language8 by Adam Bohorič in 1715. After centuries of Austrian rule and thus the strong influence of the German language, the Slovenes finally freed themselves from the situation when the Kingdom of 6 In the coastal region, there were also Italian and French political, social and linguistic influences, but we only consider the German influences here. 7 Catechismus (=Catechism) and Abecedarium (=Abecedarij). 8 Arcticae horulae succisivae, written in Latin. 112 Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR Yugoslavia was formed together with the Croats and Serbs in 1918. People gained their freedom for the right to use their own language in society and in schools. The language of education in primary and secondary schools in the territory of the Slovene people became Slovene (Kosevski Puljić & Retelj, 2019, p. 176). However, under the German occupation during the Second World War, the language of education in certain areas, and with it also the language of administration, became German again. When Italy surrendered, the German-language area expanded. There were areas where the partisans organized schools in the Slovene language, but at the same time, in areas occupied by Germans, the language in schools was strictly German. It is after the liberation in 1945 that the Germanization of Slovenia finally ended (Kosevski Puljić & Retelj, 2019, pp. 176-177). Putting aside political and sociological discussions, we may say that the German language was the most influential foreign language throughout the history of Slovenia, at least up to the first half of the 20th century. In the earliest publications in the Slovene language, we can recognize the authors’ struggle with German borrowings. The Slovene elites in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the founders of the first university in Ljubljana, mostly received their higher education at Austrian, German, and Czech universities. The German influences in the present-day Slovene language may be recognized in the lexicon, semantics, syntax, as well as phraseology. Today, the German language is a compulsory subject in many non-language study programs at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, e.g. Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, History, Comparative Literature, Art History, and Musicology (Kosevski Puljić & Retelj, 2019, p. 178). Without knowing German and not being able to read documents in German, it is impossible to learn about the Slovene nation or conduct research, particularly in relation to its history. For example, the German-Slovene Dictionary for History (Hudelja, 2016) includes words and expressions from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The main part of the historical terminology is about the feudal relationships, artisans, and related administrative systems (Hudelja, 2021). Some archaic words, which are considered extinct today, may be found in this German- Slovene dictionary since they appear often in the older documents studied and analyzed by the students and researchers in Slovenia. 4 Japanese Studies in Slovenia In contrast to the long-established relationship between Slovenia and the German- speaking nations, the Japanese studies in Slovenia is a relatively young discipline. It was formally recognized through the establishment of the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts in 1995, in which the Japanese Studies coexists with the Chinese and the Korean Studies. The students of the Japanese Studies, when assessed in the framework of CEFR levels, reach the level of B2 at the end of the 1st cycle, and the level Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch … 113 of C1 or a little below it at the end of the 2nd cycle (Shigemori Bučar et al. 2014, pp. 462-464). At present, our students learn the Japanese language with the online Japanese- Slovene Learners’ Dictionary “jaSlo” which presently contains 9,891 entries.9 For words and expressions not found in jaSlo, students rely on bilingual dictionaries with English or some other language they know. When the students proceed to more advanced levels, they are expected to consult Japanese monolingual dictionaries and other references, case by case, according to the field of individual student’s interest. Enthusiastic students, who grew up in the age of the Internet and various electronic resources, are hungry for more expert information. Most of them have a good command of English, and some of them even of German. And since we are rather weak in offering a Japanese-Slovene dictionary, the GJDW dictionary is a very welcome source of information. If we turn to research activities, there is an ongoing project at the Department of Asian Studies which aims to locate, analyze and describe in context the objects and ideas brought to the Slovene region from the East Asian nations.10 Therefore, our researchers encounter rather older expressions in Japanese from the 18th, 19th, and beginning of the 20th century. The year 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Meiji era. The time of modernization and industrialization in the history of Japan is much in focus lately, and it is true also in Slovenia where several exhibitions and lecture series have been held. 5 Evaluation In Slovenia11, the GJDW dictionary is expected to be used primarily by students and researchers in the field of Japanese studies, and translators of Japanese texts, particularly the Japanese literature. Though not native speakers of German, we can say that such users are culturally and linguistically quite close to the German-speaking region in Europe. If equipped with some knowledge of German, this dictionary may be even more suitable to use than for example the Kenkyusha’s Japanese-English Dictionary, due to its scale and content. As mentioned earlier, highly regarded is the incorporation of the so-called “modern Japanese language” (Stalph, 2009, p. 11), the language used in Japan from the beginning of the Meiji period onwards. Compared to contemporary Japanese, the language of the Meiji period is quite classical, however, considering the fact that the 9 Principal researcher of the jaSlo dictionary compilation is Kristina Hmeljak-Sangawa, Dept. of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana Accessed January 8, 2023. 10 See https://vazcollections.si/ for some project results. 11 And other countries of the former Yugoslavia, i. e. Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. 114 Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR movement for the unification of the written and spoken language in Japan12 started in 1866, and that the Meiji period is the beginning of the modern era attracting much attention of the Japanologists and scholars concerned with the history of East Asia, the dictionary GJDW including the usages in the Meiji period is of considerable merit. An example of the careful treatment of the Meiji period is found on page 401 of Volume 3. The entries of a common noun rikken (constitutionalism) and an adjective rikkenteki (constitutional) are followed by the following four independent entries: rikken-dōshikai , rikken-kaishintō , rikken-minseitō and rikken-seiyūkai . These proper nouns usually appear in encyclopedias and monolingual Japanese dictionaries13 but not in bilingual dictionaries. However, in this particular dictionary (GJDW), these important political parties of the late 19th and early 20th century are explained with German translations and years of their existence and marked with a specialized field label HIST (history), as shown below. rikken-kaishintō n. (HIST) die Konstitutionelle Fortshrittspartei (1882–1896). (Stalph et al. 2022, p. 401) Another example that proves the careful selection of entries for the users, who are primarily non-native speakers of Japanese, may be seen on page 1746 with the entry tennō (=emperor). Besides the usual compounds like tennō-heika (=His Majesty the Emperor), tennō-ki (=the Imperial standard), tennō-sei (=the Emperor system of Japan), the explanation for the compound tennō-tanjōbi (=the Emperor’s Birthday) is further provided with the date of the national holiday in each period (Shōwa, Heisei and Reiwa) and for whom. The name of each emperor is perhaps particularly important for his identification in the West. After a few more compounds (kinjō-tennō =the present Emperor, shōchō-tennō =the Emperor as symbol of the state, shodai-tennō =the first Emperor, shōwa-tennō =the Emperor Shōwa) and some phrases, there are three longer excerpts including the word tennō or its compound that were taken from the Constitution of the Empire of Japan from 1890, one literary work (Ikezawa, 1993, translated into German in 2002), and a history of Japan (Inoue K., 1963-1966, translated into German in 1993). At the end of this entry, there is a note for users, NB (nota bene), that the entry sumera-gi (archaic for tennō) should also be referred to. If we turn to page 1453, there are four entries around this word, its variations and compounds, such 12 Genbun-itchi undō by Maejima Hisoka in 1866. 13 For analysis I have, besides the Kenkyūsha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, consulted the following dictionaries in the JapanKnowledge Lib collection: Encyclopedia Nipponica, Shogakukan Unabridged Dictionary of the Japanese Language (Nihon Kokugo Daijiten), Dai-ji-sen, Shogakukan Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary (4th edition), Shogakukan Grand German-Japanese Dictionary (2nd Edition). Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch … 115 as sumera-, sumera-gi, sumera-ki, sumera-mikoto, sumero-ki. The dictionary is quite concise with the archaic variations of the word as well. It seems that the dictionary tries to include all important cultural elements throughout the history of Japan. Randomly referred entries carried labels of specialized fields such as BUDDH (Buddhism) and TEE (tea ceremony), for example, tendai , tendai-shū , tendai-zasu on page 1734 for the former, and tenmoku , tenmoku-jawan , on page 1745 for the latter. For the Tendai sect of Buddhism, the translation in German is followed by four lines of explanation for the historical background. Also for the tea bowl tenmoku, there are four and a half lines of its historical explanation. These explanations are set in a lighter font and put in parentheses. Another entry rikka on page 401 also calls for attention. This entry consists altogether of eight lines in two parts, for the “tatebana style” of ikebana, and with the on’yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) rikka which seems to be of historical naming from the end of the Muromachi period. This entry does not carry any label (expected would be IKEBANA) and there is no entry of tatebana in the same dictionary. The dictionary is encyclopedic also with entries labeled SUMO: oshitaoshi, yorikiri, tsuridashi, etc. The Japanese terms seem to be already included in the German lexicon. For each of these entries, there is the originally Japanese Germanized word with the article for neuter, followed by an explanation that it is the naming for a winning technique (=kimarite ) and how the technique is performed, for example: tsuridashi n. (SUMO) das Tsuridashi (entscheidende Technik; Herausheben des Gegners aus dem Ring). Idioms and proverbs are also abundantly included (marked with a small black star in GJDW). The entry ōgi (=a folding fan) was chosen for comparison with the same entry in the Kenkyūsha’s Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th edition. Collocations such as ōgi wo hiraku (=open one’s fan) and ōgi wo tsukau (=use a fan) are included in both, while ōgi wo kazasu (=shade one’s eyes with a fan) and ōgi wo tojiru (=shut one’s fan) can only be found in Kenkyūsha, and ōgi wo tatamu (=put together/close one’s fan) only in GJDW. There is one phrase in GJDW marked as an idiom (with a black star), ōgi wo narasu , which can not be found in any bilingual dictionary I consulted. This phrase is listed in monolingual Japanese dictionaries such as Daijisen and Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (in the collection of JapanKnowledge Lib), in which examples are cited from Genji Monogatari (1001–1014) and Taketori Monogatari (end of 9th to the beginning of 10th century). Here, and in other entries of similar context, we can feel the contributors who are themselves experienced translators of classic Japanese literature, or well-versed scholars in the field. 116 Chikako SHIGEMORI BUČAR In relation to the classics, the GJDW marks all season words kigo for Japanese poetry directly after the first German translation, e. g.: ōgi n. der (Falt-)Fächer (Jahreszeitenwort f. Sommer)… (p. 45) tsuki n. ① der Mond (Jahreszeitenwort f. Herbst). (p. 1979) This is also one of the reasons why the dictionary may be called a good reference, in this case for researchers in the field of literature. The dictionary is made friendly to non-native users. It marks grammatical categories with labels for word classes. Therefore, on page 20 in Volume 1, there is a list of word-class labels used in the dictionary where we can notice some categories not always present in usual dictionaries, such as attr. =attributive, na-no-adj. nari-adj., shiku-adj., tari-adj. The latter three labels are specially set up probably due to many adjectives in the written language bungo of the Meiji period. Verbs are labeled intransitive (v.i.) or transitive (v.t.). In the end, I would also mention some newer words and examples. In today’s rapidly changing world, pawahara (=power harassment, p. 262) and sekuhara (=sexual harassment, p. 777) are included in neologisms, the latter word with an example from the newspaper Asahi Shinbun published in 2006. I was also interested in the translation examples in both languages from a third language. For the entry tōjō (=entrance on the stage) and its sub-entry tōjō-suru (=come on the stage; appear, show up) on pages 1827-1828, there are plenty of examples in context for both meanings (entry, to come on the stage; advent, to arrive or make an appearance) from literary works of Abe Kōbō, Brecht, Kawabata, Inoue Yasushi, Ikezawa, Hesse, Kita Morio, and Murakami, also from Japanese journals Aera 2001 and Josei Sebun 1999. There are also translation examples in context from third- language publications, such as those by Nabokov, Borges, and Hawking: Nabokov lebensvolle Figuren Borges …treten wieder auf Hawking seit es sehr genaue Navigationssysteme gibt, … All the above examples were chosen to support the corresponding semantic solutions of the Japanese word in various genres and contexts in German. The word tōjō is surely used quite frequently, and its numerous examples – as well as the examples from other entries – in the GJDW dictionary will definitely help learners and translators ponder over the word and its possible expressions in translation. Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch … 117 6 Conclusion As Shibata (2011, p. 209) states, the GJDW dictionary is an exciting and provocative piece of work because it “attempts to go beyond mere linguistic dictionaries to illustrate not only the foundations of a single culture but also its dynamics from both sides, Japanese and German”. As such, this publication is certainly a great achievement and its users will yet decide its true value. I am truly grateful for the work and look forward to many more discoveries with the help of this dictionary. References Department of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana & Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute. Japanese-Slovene Learners’ Dictionary (jaSlo). Retrieved from . Last accessed 25. 12. 2022. Hudelja, N. (2016) Nemško-slovenski zgodovinski slovar. Ljubljana; ZZFF. Hudelja, N. (2021) Vloga slovarja pri preučevanju preteklosti. Jezikovna Slovenija, portal za obveščanje o jezikovni politiki Republike Slovenije. 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Last accessed 25. 12. 2022. Stalph J. et al. (2022). Großes japanisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (=Comprehensive Japanese- German Dictionary) Band 3 O — Z. München: IUDICIUM Verlag. Symposium West-Östliche Sprachbrücke – Fertigstellung des Grossen japanisch-deutschen Wörterbuchs. Retrieved from . Last accessed 18. 12. 2022.