Customer Reviews

Tuttle Japanese Business Dictionary Revised Edition

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I bought this dictionary because I needed a quick business Japanese reference book and was finding my regular dictionaries to be lacking. It's very useful when looking up specialized words for a report; however, I do not recommend it for what appears to be its intended usage of "handy reference guide for business people who deal frequently with Japanese speakers."

For one, the pronunciation guide it gives is extremely lacking. It does not try to make the distinction between English vowel sounds and Japanese vowel sounds; words like "tabete" get the pronunciation guide of "tah-bay-tay." The book tells you that the Japanese "hon" rhymes with the English word "bone," which is false.

The dictionary part of it is helpful, again, only if you know what you're doing. Often it doesn't give a detailed definition; "management" is listed as keiei or kanri, both of which mean the action of managing, NOT people, like in, say, "upper management." This would be fine if the book told you this specifically, but it just leaves you to hope you're getting the exact right definition.

It's also lacking in example sentences. With verbs, you want to make sure you're using them correctly. However, in only a few instances does it give you examples that clearly show which particles you need to be using and in what type of context the verb can be used. I had to go online to find most of those.

It's a quick-reference for people who don't want to spend hours trying to figure out if they're getting the right business term, but I doubt it would be helpful for a complete beginner.