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Analyzing Japanese texts

The functions of MAXDictio are based on algorithms which are used to separate words by spaces or other separators. In syllable-based languages, e.g. Japanese, there are no spaces between words, therefore this way of differentiation is not possible.

MAXQDA can utilize the module MeCab: Yet Another Part-of-Speech and Morphological AnalyzerMeCab for Japanese word separation and for optionally ignoring Japanese particles. Particles do not have meaning themselves but are used to order a sentence and mark the relationships of the words in a sentence

To analyze a Japanese text with MAXQDA, go to Preferences > Word Separation and activate the options Text language is Japanese and optionally Ignore particles (Japanese)

Analyzing Japanese text data in MAXQDA

It is recommended to use these options only if Japanese texts are currently being analyzed, because you might get wrong results for texts in other languages.

Tip: You should add the following characters to be cut off for functions such as word frequency, so these will not be counted as words. Please note that these characters are technically different from their latin equivalents although they look very similar:
＠ ！ ＄ ％ ＆ ／ （ ） ＝ ？ ＾ ‘ ’ “ ” 「」 『 』 ［ ］〔 〕〈 〉 ＜ ＞ 《 》 ≪ ≫ ｛ ｝【 】 ￥ ＃ ＋ ― ー ＊ ＿ ： ；～ 。 ． 、 ，

All functions of MAXDictio can be used for Japanese texts, except for the Whole word options available in the dictionary and in the dialog of Keyword-in-context function.

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