It is really simple to contribute to jmdict! Do not feel intimidated.

I don't consider myself an "avid" book reader, but I read a decent amount of fantasy books. I often come across words that I am surprised are not in any of my dictionaries, including jmdict/jisho/jitendex, although they are often very straightforward or obvious in context.

J-J dictionaries can be very "stiff" and inflexible, as they require going through a fairly thorough process of editorialization, publishing, printing, etc. Meanwhile there are amazing open source J-E dictionaries like jmdict (which is what jisho, jitendex, and 99% of online J-E dictionaries are based on) that are fairly straightforward and dynamic. Jmdict receives tons of updates every day and keeps getting better and better.

I'm not going to argue if J-E or J-J is better (I think both are great and you should use both to the best of your abilities), but it is undeniable that the amount of effort behind keeping jmdict curated is insane value for what it asks (it's free!).

However, I've also found it can be quite tricky to figure out how to contribute and help make this project better, as I've recently added some new words, I figured, why not make a small post describing how to help. I imagine I am not the only one that regularly comes across these words.

Not all words can be easily added, as some are just way too specific or literally made up by an author for that specific piece of work, so they aren't suitable to have their own entry in a dictionary, but there are also a lot of them (like 弩兵 I linked above) that are generic enough to warrant existing, even if most J-J dictionaries don't have them (I also added 乳溝 after seeing it in a documentary on TV).

HOW TO ADD A NEW ENTRY TO JISHO/JMDICT:

• Bookmark this page.

• Select jmdict from the corpus drop down menu

• Write the kanji in the kanji field (like 弩兵)

• Write the reading/furigana in the Reading(s) field (like どへい). There might be multiple readings, you can separate them with a semicolon.

• Write the meaning in the Meanings section. Follow the help page to figure out the syntax and tag of parts of speech (name, verb, adjective, etc)

• Link to any references in the References section. Ideally there should be one or two websites (wikipedia, narou, random google blog articles, etc) showing those words being used.

• Add any comments/explanation in the comments section, making it clear how you came across the word, why it should be added, and any clarification that might be required.

You can use the documentation to help you fill in better entries, but in my (admittedly limited) experience, the jmdict maintainers are very welcoming and will help you format any confusing/incorrect/broken request you will send.

And remember to update your dictionaries often! Jitendex on Yomitan has monthly releases and you can update directly from inside yomitan with just one click. Jisho.org updates very quickly (not sure if daily or even hourly, but it's very fast). A lot of other dictionary apps or sites that source from jmdict (like jpdb.io, etc) are very slow or never update, so you should be careful when using those apps.

A lot of complaints I've seen over the years about how bad jisho/jmdict/J-E dictionaries are usually come from people using very outdated or old versions. Jmdict used to be really bad (lots of confusing and misleading entries) even as far recently as 2-3 years ago, but recently it's gotten much much better. Lots of new dictionaries like the Jitendex project from yomitan also made it much more approachable, so don't sleep on it!

You can also use the same process to submit any fixes or improve any definitions you might find confusing, so instead of complaining, be the change you want to see!