JMdict

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JMdict is a large, free, machine-readable Japanese dictionary with translations in many languages. As of March 2023, it covers over 214,000 entries and 314,000 unique headword-reading combinations. It’s widely used on the internet and in apps and is considered a standard reference.

The project began in 1991 when Jim Breen created EDICT, a plain text dictionary in EUC-JP. It evolved into JMdict in UTF-8 XML in 1999. The XML format allows multiple surface forms, multiple readings, cross-references, and glosses in other languages. The original EDICT format is still used for systems that need it. An expanded EDICT2 adds more fields and cross-references and is used by systems like WWWJDIC. There are also XML versions for Apple’s Dict and the EPWING/JIS X 4081 formats.

Since 2000, the dictionary has been managed by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG) with an editorial board. Online maintenance began in 2010. From 2021, some JMdict entries include example sentences from the Tatoeba corpus. JMdict inspired other dictionaries, such as the CEDICT Chinese dictionary and Wadoku, a Japanese–German dictionary.