Discuss it in Talkback!

DS Rakubiki Jiten is a dictionary program recently released in Japan. It also contains a few other handy tools for travelers. After putting it through its paces, it seems to be a great tool if you’re Japanese or studying Japanese, but players simply looking for something to help guide them through import titles won’t find it to be much help without further study of the language.

At the core of the utility are three dictionaries paired with handwriting recognition software. There is a complete Japanese dictionary, a Japanese to English dictionary, and an English to Japanese dictionary. All of the menus, word lists, and buttons appear on the touch screen, with definitions displayed on the upper screen. You can scroll through an individual entry with the D-pad or use the L and R buttons to scroll back up through the entries that you’ve seen since you turned the system on, just like in PictoChat. There are four font sizes, with the largest one showing the detailed calligraphy for the entry you’ve looked up.

To look up a word, you simply pick the type of character you wish to draw and draw it on one of two pads on the touch screen. The software recognizes hiragana and katakana as well as English letters and numbers, but sadly, it is not sophisticated enough to recognize the complicated Kanji characters that are so vexing when trying to read Japanese. The system is set to search all three of its dictionaries by default, but you can select an individual dictionary to narrow your results. You can also expand your results with selections on the top to include related phrases within entries on the main search list.

One catch with the character recognition is that the software is looking at the order in which you draw your strokes. The keypads from PictoChat are also included here; so, if you aren’t familiar with which line to draw first, you may be better off typing in the characters rather than drawing them. However, if you do know the stroke order, it feels much quicker and more natural to use the drawing pads.

DS Rakubiki Jiten includes a great bookmark system. You can bookmark any entry for future reference in one of three folders, saving you from having to make another search if you forget the word. On top of that, though, the system also has a flash card tool. It will show an entry you’ve bookmarked on the lower screen, prompting you for the definition, and when you click on the entry, the correct answer will appear on the upper screen.

The program also includes a number of other handy tools for travelers. A traveler’s phrase book is included, which can be helpful -- although again, it was designed for Japanese travelers needing to speak English, rather than the other way around; so the Japanese phrases are often written with Kanji. There is a mini-calendar for reference, but nothing you can write appointments in. The world clock is nice, but unfortunately, it assumes that the clock in the DS firmware is based in Japan, throwing off all the times unless you synch your system to Japanese time. There is also an alarm function that allows you to set multiple alarms; a calculator; a crazy little quiz game; and of all things, an animation flipbook, which allows you to draw up to fifty frames of animation.

The program is fully compatible with PictoChat, allowing you to watch for chat sessions and join them. When PictoChatting with DS Rakubiki Jiten, the character recognition software is still available, so you can draw characters or letters on the screen, and the program will convert them to standard text. You can switch to the program’s other functions without leaving the chat room, and you can copy just about anything from the other applications to the chat room. This feature allows you to quiz your friends if you have a study group, send the calendar to someone if you’re making plans, or flood the chat room with your animation frames, since it sends each frame as a separate message.

I’ve used DS Rakubiki Jiten for several weeks as I’ve played Chibi Robo, which is a very text-intensive game. It has been great to point me in the right direction or help me understand a joke, but there are certain characteristics of the language that keep the dictionary from being an importer’s dream if the person hasn’t already taken courses in Japanese. The system’s inability to recognize Kanji, while understandable, practically halves its usefulness with helping in games like this. Words may be conjugated in the context of the game, requiring you to guess the root form of the word in order to look it up. Plus, since Japanese doesn’t have spaces between words, it’s not always clear which character to start with. However, in comparison to flipping through a paper dictionary, the speed with which you can search for words gives you far more freedom to experiment until you find an entry that makes sense.

DS Rakubiki Jiten really is a great set of tools, but it’s not for everyone. If you’ve studied some Japanese and find yourself looking things up in a dictionary regularly, this can be a great addition, with its quick searches and extra functions like flash cards. However, if you’re just looking for some run-and-gun game translations, you may just need to stick with sites like GameFAQs.

DS Rakubiki Jiten is available from our partners at Lik-Sang.