Looking for a way to learn and/or read kanji? Use your iPhone (or iPad) to draw kanji and find its meaning. As there are literally thousands of kanji, paper dictionaries and most iPhone/iPad Japanese dictionaries on their own are almost useless, as it can take a long time to look for just one kanji. I have discovered a method of translating kanji which is free and very reliable.
I have basic conversational Japanese skills, so I can speak and listen OK. I can read hiragana and katakana fine. The most frustrating thing about living here is the not being able to understand kanji.?Having now lived in Japan for a few months, I have tried many methods to understand kanji on the spot. Here is a free method to understand kanji using your iPhone.
How to use your iPhone to draw and translate Japanese kanji
First download the iPhone app Kotoba!, it is the best free Japanese dictionary I have used.
Kotoba! is a great Japanese dictionary app, used in this article to read and translate kanji.
Now set you need to setup your iPhone so you can draw kanji. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Keyboard and select ‘Chinese – Simplified (Handwriting)’.
You need to add the Chinese-Simplified Handwriting keyboard to translate Japanese kanji.
Now launch the Kotoba! app, go to the Dictionary section and tap inside the search box. The normal keyboard will appear on-screen, however there is a new button which looks like a globe, tap this.
You are now in a new screen which enables you to draw with your finger. As you draw new lines, the closest match appears on the right side of the screen. At times it can be a little tricky to find the right match, and you may need to clear what you have drawn and try again, most of the time it comes up with the correct kanji. If you are not finding the correct one, try changing the stroke order.
iPhone Japanese kanji translating with your finger!
You can search for just one kanji, or input multiples that may make a word. Once you are done, tap the globe again to return to the English keyboard where you can press the search button.
It is easiest to translate kanji when you are seeing single words, for example a sign. It can be a little more difficult to translate kanji in a written document, as Japanese doesn’t use spaces between words, so it is difficult to know when to stop and search.
Try it for yourself, it isn’t perfect, but compared to some apps (which cost $5 of more) that take a photo and try to interpret the kanji, this is much more reliable with a higher success rate.
Note: If you are travelling to Japan from another country, your iPhone may not be able to make calls or connect to the internet in Japan. If it does, you will probably pay a very hefty price for international roaming. That being said, take your iPhone with you for your visit to Japan and set Airplane Mode to ON before you depart your country.
Looks like a great new way to find and look up kanji. Much better than the way I started with kanji dictionaries that took forever to find anything.
I think the Kotoba app is great for a free app and covers pretty much any word or Kanji you would care to look up, but for someone serious about Japanese learning the Wisdom dictionary app is much more useful in the long-term.
It has better definitions, more useful examples and it lets you search not just by word but by idiom usage and examples – both very useful things.
Downside? It costs $30. I use it every day though, so to me it’s worth it.
Thanks for the mini-review Dan. When it comes to learning Japanese, I use iKnow.jp as it syncs the web and iPhone apps together, costs about JPY800 per month, less for longer subscriptions.
Oh yeah, I used to use the iKnow web app back when it was free and called smart.fm. Pretty handy for learning vocab!
The new iKnow app has listening and speaking exercise too, so it is pretty good for learning sentences too. Still, it is mainly a vocab builder… a great one at that.
Thanks for the work around. You might want to add the Chinese – Traditional Handwriting keyboard too since the Japanese do use some traditional characters. FYI, it’s rare but there are a few Kanji unique to Japanese.
Thanks for the tip ER!
Kotoba! Seems to have removed the draw and recognize function to finding a kanji reading. Unless I am missing something I am not seeing the globe icon that is supposed to make such entry possible
Hi Bryan. It’s not the app that has the functionality to draw in the kanji – it’s the iPhone software itself.
You need to follow the steps to activate the additional keyboard in the settings – this is in this post.
I’m on the latest version of Kotoba and it’s definitely there.
I just put Kotoba on my ipod touch last week and found this page today. I just enabled the character keyboard under the ipod’s settings/general/keyboard/international keyboard. I added both Chinese simplified handwriting and Chinese tradtitional handwriting. I’m going to need to practice since it’s not finding my characters with my chicken scratch, but I’ll get there! Thanks for posting this useful feature!
The iPad app would be great for writing in the kanji, more room than the iPhone! After playing with it over the months I’ve noticed that the correct stroke order helps in identifying the characters also. You don’t have to know the stroke order of every single character but you do need to understand the generic rule: top to bottom; left to right.