Prof. Emmerich Simoncsics (Vienna University of Technology)
By means of a mnemonic code, derived from the structural feature of the Kanji, even beginners (who have not yet learned Japanese grammar) can within five hours be enabled to retrieve multiple compound technical terms (consisting of up to 14 Kanji) by computer aid within seconds. Also in the so-called “Japanese English Code Dictionary” (80,000 entries) students can look up the words quickly. It is the “quickest” dictionary of the world. Especially for non-Japanese engineers, who can understand much information from Japanese publications by diagrams, illustrations and pictures, provided they can read the parameters or the short explanatory texts, this ability is very important. Japanologists, who are occupied with the translation of technical texts learn the above method in max. two hours. Even Japanese students of special disciplines, who during their studies in universities have to learn more than 1,000 additional Kanji in order to be able to read the relevant literature, have difficulties to find the definition of compound technical terms. With the help of the above system the reading of technical literature can be highly facilitated.
Computer-aided Japanese Sentence Analyzer (JASAN)
Instead of learning more than 100 sentence patterns a quick overall view of the Japanese grammar can be achieved by just five basic sentence structures. The prerequisite for an efficient sentence analyzer, however, is the precise functional definition of the parts of speech of each word (concept, term). These parts of speech precisely determine the functional roles of the constituents in the respective sentences. Therefore, for the computer program they represent the motor for the “clause by clause” translation procedure of even compound-complex sentences. This analyzer guarantees a quick understanding of the syntax of the sentence. In the framework of our research activity on this field the functional definition of all words of the above mentioned Code Dictionary could not yet be completed, but it has already revolutionized Japanese teaching methods at the Vienna University of Technology.