Cafoscari Jisho App – Illustrazione di Giacomo Cavalieri

Active from/to: 2022 – ongoing

Research Team: Prof. Marcella Mariotti (Principal Investigator 2022-today), Ph.D. Alessandro Mantelli (e-Learning System Coordinator and Senior Researcher 2022-23), M.A. Gaia Varone (Project Coordinator 2022-today), M.A. Chiara Alessandrini (Junior Coordinator 2022-23), Mr. Fabio Marra ( Jr. Coordinator 2023-today), Mr. Giuseppe Garassino (Software Developer 2022-today), Mr. Francesco Paolocci (Jr. Software Developer 2022-today)

Participants: 22 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice students were involved in the translation of circa 13300 new entries. As of today (November 27, 2024) 87134 entries have been translated.

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 since 2022.

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.

In 2022, 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. Further development has been carried out to date thanks to the Business Experience Project Team (2023/24) coordinated by G. Varone and F. Marra under the supervision of Prof. M. Mariotti.

The website and the app (iOS and Android) are available for free.