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Engineering Terminology Dictionary:
Lessons Learnt from Meiji Japan and NUT-KOSENs Initiative


Yoshiki Mikami*, Naoko Lee Iizuka*, Kenjiro Nagano*, Katsuko T. Nakahira*
Yoshinori Naruse**, Chikatoshi Yamada***, Yoshiko Kawamura****
Nagaoka University of Technology, **Toyama National College of Technology,
***Okinawa National College of Technology, ****Tokyo International University
*1603-1 Kamitomioka-cho, Nagaoka 940-2188, Japan
*E-mail: mikami@kjs.nagaokaut.ac.jp


The first part of this paper reviews historical lessons learnt from the
experience of Meiji Japan regarding the teaching medium of engineering
education. The importance of mother language use in engineering education
and of terminology development is illustrated based on findings from
investigations on historical documents. The second part of this paper
introduces the response of Nagaoka University of Technology and National
College of Technology (KOSEN) to those lessons. The language coverage
and vocabularies of the Multilingual Engineering Terminology Dictionary
developed by the Engineering Dictionary Committee of the university are
presented.


1. Introduction
In the first International GIGAKU Conference in Nagaoka (IGCN 2012), Kozo Ishizaki, the
former Vice President of Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT) and the chairman of NUTs
Engineering Dictionary Committee, stated that (an) important aspect (of industrial development) is
language used in development. Japanese tried to translate every European concept into Japanese for
general Japanese people to be blessed by the modern scientific development. It is important not to
divide a society into English speaking and non-English speaking classes.
Although engineering subjects were taught in English at the first engineering college of Japan
the Imperial College of Engineering (Kbu Dai-gakk)from the early Meiji period, serious and
continuous efforts have been made by pioneering teachers in engineering to translate basic
engineering terminologies into Japanese language; gradually, teaching materials had been developed
based on these achievements. These sets of teaching materials were the basis of concerted efforts in
engineering education and human development in Japan. Without such efforts, the quick adoption of
imported technologies, and therefore the rapid industrialization of Meiji-era Japan, might not have
been possible.
Similarly, international students currently studying at NUT should be encouraged to propagate
their knowledge to people in their native countries using mother language terminology. This
recognition and reasoning has formed the basis of the development of a series of trilingual
engineering terminology dictionaries by NUT during the last five years.

2. Language used in Engineering Education in Meiji Japan
The first engineering education program was formulated by the initiative of the Meiji
government in the 1870s, only a few years after the Meiji Restoration. The Imperial College of
Engineering, the cradle of engineering education of modern Japan, was established in Tokyo in 1873
[1]. All teaching staff members were invited from Europe, with the majority of the staff hailing from
Scotland, where professional engineering education had been implemented since the early nineteenth
century and was considered to be the most advanced engineering education center in the world. The
first president of the college, Henry Dyer, came from Glasgow v the nomination by Sir William
Thomson.
In this newly-created college, all subjects were taught in English. Applicants to the college had to
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pass through an entrance examination which included among its subjects English language ability.
The weekly calendar of the college shows that students studied English language for two hours every
day from Mondays to Fridays during their first two years in the college [2]. At the end of six years of
education, students had to submit theses also written in the English language.
The college was later merged with the Imperial University (renamed again to the Imperial
University of Tokyo later), when the latter was formulated as a central institute for higher education
of Meiji Japan. A lecture notebook and examination paper on Hydraulics and Hydraulic Machinery
written by Professors Bunji Mano and Ariya Inokuchi of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
of the Imperial University of Tokyo has been preserved, and it reveals that lectures and examinations
were conducted in English even 40 years after the beginning of engineering education in Japan
(Figure 1). Professor Mano was the first president of the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers
(JSME), and the notebook and examination paper were designated as Mechanical Engineering
Heritage Documents by the JSME in 2007.


Fig. 1 Lecture Notebook and Examination Paper on Hydraulics and Hydraulic Machinery by
Professors Bunji Mano and Ariya Inokuchi at the Imperial University of Tokyo, circa 1906.

Takahashi et al [3] conducted an investigation of an archived collection of 2,913 theses
submitted by students from both the Imperial College of Engineering (1879-1885) and the Imperial
University of Tokyo (1885-1934), and categorized the theses in mechanical, electrical engineering
and architecture by languages used. The number of theses according to language is shown in Figure
2 This result provides succinct evidence of the situation described above.
In the field of mechanical engineering, all theses were written in English until as late as the
mid-1910s. In electrical engineering, the vast majority of theses were written in English until as late
as the 1920s. In architecture, however, there appeared several differences with the fields of
engineering: the researchers found several theses written in Japanese early in the Meiji era, but it
was found that these papers were exceptions, and were regarding traditional Japanese temple
architecture.

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940
Written in Engl ish
Written in Japanese
Fig. 2a Number of theses in selected engineering field by language (mechanical engineering)
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0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940
Written in English
Written in Japanese
Fig. 2b Number of theses in selected engineering field by language (electrical engineering)
0
10
20
30
40
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940
Written in English
Written in Japanese
Fig. 2c Number of theses in selected engineering field by language (architecture)

3. The First English-Japanese Engineering Terminology Dictionary
An early Meiji-era philosopher/politician Tatsui Baba (1850-1888, Figure 3) expressed his
objection to the opinion of the then-education minister Arinori Mori, who advocated adopting
English as the official language of newly-born Japan. Baba wrote about the importance of the mother
language in preface of his book Elementary Grammar of the Japanese Language published in 1873
in London.

We must try to educate the whole mass of the people and unite them into one, in order to
promote the common happiness of the community. Mr. W.D. Whitney, in his letter to
Mr. Mori, says, Even with a fully developed system of national instruction, it would take
a very long time to teach a strange language to so large a part of the population as to raise
the letter, in general, to a perceptibly higher level. If the masses to be reached, it must be
mainly through their native speech. We think, also, that it is more desirable to try to
enrich and complete that which we have already.[4]

Babas concern was exactly the same as that of Professor Ishizaki as mentioned above.
Furthermore, in order to enrich and enable a national language to be used for professional education
in various subjects, the most urgent and important challenge is to create a sufficient set of vocabulary
and terminology in various professional domain areas, such as medicine, engineering, and
jurisdiction.
In the field of engineering, efforts had been made to enrich Japanese technical terminology by
many voluntary contributors since the Meiji period. The first major step in the development of
engineering terminology development was the publication of an English-Japanese Engineering
Terminology Dictionary KOGAKU JII (Figure 4). This dictionary was compiled by a railway
engineer named Ryutaro Nomura (1859-1943). He studied at the Imperial University and the
dictionary was published by the Engineering Society of Japan in August 1886. Over 6000
engineering terms were covered by this single volume. It is interesting to observe that in this
publication, Japanese characters are printed in the traditional vertical orientation, while English
terms are in the horizontal orientation (Figure 4, right side). This dictionary was followed by
continuous expansion and improvements of terminology development and publication of dictionaries.
This resulted in increased access to new knowledge in engineering not only for scholars in
universities, but also to members of the general public with insufficient fluency in English,
especially technicians at workshops, as well as teachers and students at trade schools.
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Fig. 3 Photo of Tatsui
Baba, date un known
Fig. 4 The First English-Japanese Engineering Dictionary published in
1886 Front cover (left) and the first page starting from Alkali (right)

Based on achievements in language enrichment and empowerment, the number of books on
engineering subjects gradually increased. As shown in Figure 5, although there have been books
published in Japanese in the fields of mathematics (sgaku) and physics (butsurigaku) since 1870,
books in mechanical engineering (kikai kgaku) written in Japanese had been published at
significant volume only after the turn of the century. Before the publication of the first engineering
dictionary in 1886, only four books in Japanese had been published for mechanical engineering.
While other factors may have accounted for the observed differences among the different
fieldssuch as the number of potential readers and the nature of the subject matter (basic versus
applied) it is logical that without appropriate terminologies in a mother language, it becomes
impossible to publish in-depth technical books in any specialist field in that language.
The lessons learned from this historical experience of Meiji Japan may also apply to present-day
countries that are undergoing industrial development. In order to create a broad basis of human
resources for industrial development, engineering education should be conducted in each countrys
mother language. It therefore requires a sufficient set of terminologies translated into mother
language. The recognition of the necessity of terminology development led to the decision by NUT
to develop a series of engineering terminology dictionary into various languages in order to support
the education of engineer students from other countries.
0
10
20
30
40
50
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930
Mechanics
Mathematics
Physics
Fig. 5 Number of books in mechanics, mathematics and physics written in Japanese language and
published in Japan during 1870-1930. Source: Takahashi et al.[3]

4. Language-based Composition of International Students at NUT
The question that presented itself was for which language should such a dictionary be
developed? To address this question, NUTs Engineering Dictionary Committee has set the
following selection criteria: (1) the population of international students by country currently enrolled
in NUT ; (2) the usage level of their mother language in engineering education in the students home
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countries. The first criterion means that the larger the population of speakers of a particular language
at NUT campus, the higher the priority given to that language. The second criterion means that if a
mother language is not used extensively at home in engineering education, a lower priority is given
to that language. This second criterion was added because many countries in Asia actually use
English for higher education, including education in engineering. These countries include India, the
Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.
In terms of the number of speakers for each language, we designated ten languages as the major
foreign languages spoken at the NUT campus (Table 1). Among these, Myanmar and Sinhalese were
dropped due to the second selection criterion, i.e., in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, higher education is
given in English. Although Korean and Mongolian have relatively few speakers in NUT at the time
of this survey, the Committee decided to add these two languages; the former was added because of
its potential importance and geographical proximity to Japan, and the latter was added because of its
large presence at Kosen (the National College of Technology).

Table 1 Top ten languages spoken at NUT campus
Language Number of students Countries and regions
As of May 2011 Past maximum
Vietnamese 80 80 Vietnam
Chinese 54 54 China, Taiwan
Malay 45 76 Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, etc.
Thai 30 39 Thailand
Spanish 29 41 Mexico, Venezuela, etc.
Myanmar 10 14 Myanmar
Indonesian 7 21 Indonesia
Sinhalese 4 5 Sri Lanka
Mongolian 3 6 Mongolia, China
Korean 2 7 Korea

5. Outline of NUT Multilingual Engineering Terminology Dictionary
After employing the selection criteria, eight languages were chosen for the publication of a
multilingual engineering terminology dictionary. The languages were Vietnamese, Chinese, Malay,
Thai, Spanish, Indonesian, Korean and Mongolian. Each version of the dictionary contains trilingual
entries, i.e., the target language, Japanese and English (Figure 6). Users can search for terms using
Romanized Japanese spelling arranged in alphabetical order. The Vietnamese version of this
dictionary was published in 2008 by a commercial publisher both in Japan and Vietnam [5] [6], and
other language versions were printed as private publications of NUT.
The web version also contains terminologies in Lao, Myanmar, and Sinhalese (Figure7). This
web version is accessible at http://gii2.nagaokaut.ac.jp/mtd/ [7].


Fig. 6 Dictionary page layout
displaying engineering terms in
Japanese, English, and the
target language; in this case,
Vietnamese.
Fig. 7a Web version (top page) Fig. 7b Web version
(Multilingual page)

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The vocabulary set available in the current dictionary is composed of basic terms from major
engineering and science subjects taught at NUT campus, namely Civil Engineering, Mechanical
Engineering, Architecture, Chemical Engineering, Communication Engineering, Computer Science,
Control Engineering, Electric and Electronics, Navigation, Mathematics and Physics. The number of
technical terms categorized by subject field is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Number of terms by field
Field of engineering Number of terms Field of engineering Number of terms
Civil Engineering 1,263 Control Engineering 1,545
Mechanical Engineering 1,186 Electric and Electronics 1,200
Architecture 1,798 Navigation 1,403
Chemical Engineering 958 Mathematics 1,284
Communication Engineering 1,410 Physics 945
Computer Science 1,538 Total 14,530
Note: Total number contains duplications in some terms

6. Conclusion
NUT will continue its efforts to enrich the contents of the dictionaries and improve access to
these resources by means of online access, as well as the development and commercial publication
of pocket dictionaries. Developing an online dictionary of engineering terminology is also critical for
international students at KOSEN, because these students are required to self-learn basic specialized
subjects at their own pace to catch up with classes. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop and
provide effective self-studying materials for e-learning, supported by the use of an online dictionary
of engineering terminology. This type of self-studying environment would enable international
students to expand their technical terms and understanding of engineering, and reduce the language
barriers between lecturer and student. International students would be better equipped to learn from
classes conducted in Japanese, and be at less of a disadvantage when compared to their Japanese
peers. This in turn would facilitate a more effective education system, and thereby producing
better-educated and competent engineers. The authors encourage feedback and suggestions from
readers and users of the dictionary in order to ensure that these resources are consistently improved.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

References
[1] Anonymous, An Engineering College in Japan, Nature, April 3, 1873, p. 430 and C.W.C.,
Engineering Education in Japan, Nature, May 17, 1877, pp. 4445.
[2] Imperial College of Engineering Tokei, Calendar, Session 1876-77, 1976, p.23.
[3] T. Takahashi, M. Matsuda, S. Kamimura, and Y. Mikami, Language of thesis in early days of
engineering education in Japan, The 4
th
Intl Symposium on Technological Innovation in
Japan, National Museum of Science, Tokyo, Dec. 10, 2008.
[4] T. Baba, An Elementary Grammar of the Japanese Language with Easy Progressive Exercises,
London, Trubner and Co., 1873, pp. x-xi
[5] JapaneseVietnamese (English) Technological Term Dictionary (Nichi-Etsu Kgaku Ygo
Jiten), Shumpsha Publishing, 2008.
[6] T in thut ng khoa hc Nht Vit, 2008. Publication in Vietnam is arranged by Oriental
Language and Culture Department, Foreign Languages College, Hanoi National
University.
[7] O. Htun, Y, Mikami et al. Int. Conf. Computer Applications (ICCA2009), Yangon, February
2627, 2009.

(Received: 23 May, 2012, Accepted: 12 June, 2012)