Word by word, the first modern Japanese-Dutch dictionary is nearing completion
Impact
It was more than twenty years ago that the plan for a Japanese-Dutch dictionary was born. Now it contains over 65,000 words, and completion is tentatively coming into view. Dictionary makers Oscar Veltink and Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren talk about their enthusiasm for this decades-long mammoth task.
Veltink had personal reasons for wanting to create a Japanese-Dutch dictionary. ‘In the late 1980s, Japan was really taking off, but there was no Japanese-Dutch dictionary,’ he says. ‘Students had to learn everything through English. I found that incredibly frustrating. When I met my Japanese wife in the late 1990s, I decided that our children would at least be able to use a Japanese-Dutch dictionary.’
From Leuven to Leiden
Veltink's daughter is now a third-year student of Japanese Studies. ‘She uses Japanese-Japanese dictionaries,’ he admits. Nevertheless, Veltink's mission has been accomplished. The online Japanese-Dutch dictionary now contains more than 65,000 words, though twenty years ago the chances of this happening seemed miniscule.
'Around 2000, we started exploring the possibilities for a dictionary in collaboration with KU Leuven. Differences of opinion about the approach and structure of the project meant that it came to an early end. Within the SURF-sponsored Japanology of the Low Countries project, a small-scale dictionary project was then set up in 2002, but it mainly involved a lot of talking,' he recalls. ‘The translations were done in Word documents, with hardly any use of digital possibilities.’
Because the faculty was in financial difficulty, there was no funding to continue the dictionary in Leiden alone after the project ended in 2004. Veltink hosted it on a server for a while with his own money, until the Ailion fund made a grant available to set up a project. Siebold House then provided a further solution. ‘The director at the time, Hans Kuijpers, suggested that it be housed there as a volunteer project. That seemed like a good idea to me, but I knew right away that we would need Hetty to lead it. I was mainly involved in computer-assisted education myself. Hetty would be able to provide the linguistic input.’
Getting started with the content
‘During my Japanese studies, I already found it unfortunate that so little attention was paid to the linguistic side of the language,’ says Geerdink-Verkoren. ‘For example, it covered literature, economics, law, film, and theatre, but in terms of language, it remained somewhat stuck on conversation and learning the writing system, while I was very interested in the structure of languages. That is why I took all kinds of elective courses in Comparative Linguistics during my Japanese studies. During my PhD programme there, I created some entries for the Japanology of the Low Countries project, but nothing came of it. I started all over again when Oscar approached me to set up a new dictionary project.’
On a completely voluntary basis, Geerdink-Verkoren and Veltink have been managing a group of volunteers since 2005 who receive a number of words to translate by email on a daily or weekly basis, depending on their preference. In addition, they can choose words to translate and submit themselves. ‘Oscar developed and built the entire system for this project himself, which started from scratch, allowing me to determine exactly what the content should look like,’ says Geerdink-Verkoren, who manages the inbox of the Lemma Management System, where all submitted translations end up before she edits them.
‘Japanese is a very culture-driven language. If you translate it via English or using Google, a lot can go wrong,’ she explains. ‘For example, I recently had the lemma 黒南風 (kurohae), whose characters mean “black”, “south” and “wind”. Google translated it as “black south wind”, but that says nothing about its true meaning, which is: the wind that blows at the beginning of the rainy season, when it gets darker. It is precisely because of this interweaving of language and culture in Japanese that a dictionary like this is still necessary, and you can’t blindly rely on modern technology.’
Geerdink-Verkoren spends twenty to thirty hours a week on the dictionary, enough to process an average of three hundred entries per week. Geerdink-Verkoren: 'It helps that I'm retired, so I have the time, but it's also just a lot of fun to do. We now have a lot of words that aren't even in the largest Japanese-English dictionary. That's really exciting.’ In 2021, the management team expanded with a third team member, Gijs Berends, who is responsible for communication and recruiting new employees. The list of volunteers changes over the years; some stop because they no longer have time, and fortunately, new employees take over.
Nice for the shelf
When Geerdink-Verkoren and Veltink reach 75,000 words, ‘hopefully between now and five years from now’, they will have achieved what Veltink calls ‘the lower limit of a dictionary’. ‘Of course, a dictionary is never finished,’ he says. ‘Because we work online, we can easily keep it alive and continue to add to it, but it would be nice for the shelf if we could get a grant to produce a bound version in a few years’ time, if only for all the volunteers who have worked so hard.’
What do they themselves consider to be the best entry in their dictionaries? ‘愛読者 (aidokusha),’ says Geerdink-Verkoren. 'It means something like someone who reads a lot and enjoys reading. In Dutch, we need a whole subordinate clause for that, but in Japanese, one word suffices. Veltink chooses 一生懸命 ( isshōkenmei), which means with heart and soul, intensely; with complete dedication; with all one's might; with full commitment. 'That sums up how we feel about the project.'