Just a few years ago, I was certain I could never get by without Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary and the venerable Nelson close at hand. Today, however, these and other weighty tomes gather dust on a nearby bookshelf, banished to obsolescence by my favorite desktop reference, the Web.

In this column I'm going to introduce various Web-based tools for learning and using Japanese. With the growth of the Internet and advances in machine translation (MT) technology, we have seen a proliferation in the number of online translators, dictionaries, study guides and related services. If you are using Japanese on a computer at work or school, here are a few of my favorites sites that can make life a bit easier.

Web-based translation systems are quite new and relatively few in number. They are built around standard Web forms that accept text in one language and generate a corresponding translation in one or more target languages. The interface makes it easy to copy text from another browser window or different application and paste it on the translation window. Best of all, these services are available at no charge.