Active from/to: 2022 – ongoing

Research Team: Prof. Marcella Mariotti (Principal Investigator), Dr. Alessandro Mantelli (e-Learning System Coordinator and Senior Researcher), Dr. Giuseppe Garassino (Software Developer), M.A. Gaia Varone (Project Coordinator), M.A. Chiara Alessandrini (Junior Coordinator), Mr. Francesco Paolocci (IT trainee)

Participants: 22 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice students were involved in the translation of circa 13300 new entries

What is this project about?

CAFOSCARI Jisho is an Italian-Japanese digital dictionary created at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies (Ca’ Foscari University Venice, UCF).

It is based on the translation work of the JMDict library (EDRDG) carried out directly from Japanese by over 200 students and lecturers at UCF.

The various research projects on training students in translation work began with the first online dictionary ITADICT (Mariotti, Mantelli, 2011), then expanded through a4Edu (Mantelli, Mariotti 2016) and arrived at the current CAFOSCARI Jisho (APP and WEB version), supported and funded by Mitsubishi Corporation.

The CAFOSCARI Jisho project was conceived with the purpose of creating a collaborative environment where BA and MA students could work together to improve their language skills, contributing to the further development and enrichment of what will be the first Italian-Japanese online dictionary. Translation activity by the student trainees was characterized by active and critical research of terms through the use of various resources, such as search engines in different languages, applications related to Japanese language study, online and offline dictionaries, multilingual encyclopedias, and countless others.

22 students were selected out of 43 applicants, who formed the translation team, led by one Senior Researcher Alessandro Mantelli, and two Coordinators, Gaia Varone and Chiara Alessandrini.

The website and app (iOS and Android) will be available starting from September 2022.