I found a temporary solution to the Kindle Touch foreign language dictionary problem! It all has to do with the book encoding. If you want the foreign language dictionaries to work the book language has to be set to English.

If the book is encoded for English, regardless of the language of the book, the Kindle Touch will look up words in what it considers the appropriate language. In other words if you have a book with English and Spanish in it, and it is encoded to English, the dictionary will generally look up English words in the English dictionary and Spanish words in the Spanish. If you have a German book and encode it with Calibre to English, the Kindle Touch will look up the words in an approved German dictionary if you have one installed.

On the other hand, if the book language is set to anything other than English, the dictionary will return "Dictionary not found for language of book. Download from Archive."

Hope this helps and that Amazon fixes this bug.

Just to see if I got this right. If I install a Japanese dictionary (I have severall in text format) and edit the language setting in Calibre from Japanese to English, then I could use that as my default dictionary when I read a Japanese book? If that is true, then this is huge.

Not sure. The reason that I am not sure is that the Kindle site lists compatible dictionaries. I am not sure whether there is some new factor that would keep your text dictionaries from working. That said, if your Japanese dictionary is compatible then my experience is that if you set the language of the book to a foreign language and try to spell check a word it will give you the dreaded "Dictionary not found for language of book...." If you set the book language to English, then the Touch will go out and find the word in the appropriate dictionary.

Three observations:
Forget about setting a default dictionary. So far it seems that the Touch ignores that setting.
Second, it seems that the Touch will look up a word in English first and then try other dictionaries. This leads to finding a definition of soya when trying to find the spanish "soy."
Third, if you are using Calibre it is not enough to set the language to English, you need to recreate the mobi.

Everything that I have conveyed has come from experimenting with the touch and Spanish or German approved dictionaries. With a non-latin language your millage may vary.

If you try this please post you results.

I will certainly try to do that. I didn't realize that the discussion was specific to the Touch.

Just to confirm that it works. I just loaded a Chinese dictionary onto the kindle and it shows. Although I was never aware of the problem in the first place :p

Shinew hi, Was the chinese dictionary one of amazon's compatible ones? as I am not sure what they have. I already have an Harrap's French to English dictionary in Mobi format. If this is possible, it would help me translate my French reading.
I don't have a kindle touch yet so can't try myself.
Any help on this would be very welcome.
Regards
Andrew

Shinew hi, Was the chinese dictionary one of amazon's compatible ones? as I am not sure what they have. I already have an Harrap's French to English dictionary in Mobi format. If this is possible, it would help me translate my French reading.
I don't have a kindle touch yet so can't try myself.
Any help on this would be very welcome.
Regards
Andrew
No it's one of the dictionaries I got from elsewhere. I've never used it though, just loaded to see if it works. If you already have a dictionary in mobi format, just drop it into the document folder and it'll show up as one of the selectable dictionaries on the kindle. Sending it through your Personal Document won't work though.

Shinew thanks, one other question, on the K4 Touch can copy from an open book & paste to search in another dictionary?

No it's one of the dictionaries I got from elsewhere. I've never used it though, just loaded to see if it works. If you already have a dictionary in mobi format, just drop it into the document folder and it'll show up as one of the selectable dictionaries on the kindle. Sending it through your Personal Document won't work though.

The issue is not with the dictionary showing on the dictionary list. The issue is with the way that the Kindle Touch accesses the dictionaries from inside documents. Have you tried using it in a document? If the document is encoded for English it may work. If not you will probably get the "Dictonary for language not found.." error.

Stingo Hi, I am new this and don't have a Kindle Touch, but only have Kindle for PC. even though K4PC brings up the correct Amazon inbuilt dictionaries (unlike the KTouch at present) for the language of the books you are reading, I have noticed that if you remove the French Amazon Dictionary from your Kindle content folder insert your own French dictionary you can't force it to open it up, the meta language is the same and even changing the ASIN No. to that of the Amazon French Dictionary does not work. I think, like you there is a lot going on in the way the dictionary files are constructed.
But it would be nice to see what Shinew says.

regards
Andrew

I found a temporary solution to the Kindle Touch foreign language dictionary problem!

and another quote "Forget about setting a default dictionary. So far it seems that the Touch ignores that setting."

Stingo hi, regarding the two quotes above, are these problems relative to all new KTouch devices that have been sold or only some? Also has anybody that you know of, had a response from Amazon CS about them. :thanks:

Andrew

Stingo, yes I tried that within a document, the Chinese dictionary works. Neutral(probably undefined) also works. But you're probably right that specifying to a different language won't work, didn't thoroughly test it though since I don't use the feature.

Alibaba, KT does not support copy & paste. I'm not sure about windows, but I dragged the Chinese dictionary onto my Mac's kindle app, it doesn't work. So it only works on the actual kindle device.

Shinew, nice to hear your dictionary worked. the idea behind the copy & paste was incase the dictionaries didn't work! but seems there is a good chance that mine will.
And no, copy & paste does not work on my windows version. anyway thank you and Stingo for all your help, all I have to do now is wait for the KTouch to be available here in Europe. I am English but live in France hence the E to F dictionary and KTouch for quick lookup when reading French.
Look forward to hearing from you Stingo re your two earlier quotes I asked about.

Andrew

and another quote "Forget about setting a default dictionary. So far it seems that the Touch ignores that setting."

Stingo hi, regarding the two quotes above, are these problems relative to all new KTouch devices that have been sold or only some? Also has anybody that you know of, had a response from Amazon CS about them. :thanks:


Andrew,

I can only tell you what I have experienced and found with my touch. I don't know if all touches are the same but since the problem is firmware based rather than hardware I see no reason that it would be different with another device. I have called and e-mailed Amazon and am waiting for them to get back to me from their advanced tech section. The call takers normally don't know what they are talking about with regards to the language support.

Well, here is some more information on the Kindle Touch dictionary problem. According to Tech support e-mail you have to e-mail the document to the kindle to have it work. Wrong. Books purchased directly from Amazon do not work.

The problem may be how the dictionaries are encoded. I have the Barrons German and MW Spanish dictionaries. Under Dictionary settings they both show up under English dictionaries. Another user says that he downloaded a very expensive new Harper Collins Spanish Dictionary and that it showed up as a Spanish dictionary and seemed to work with Spanish encoded books.

Unfortunately if you remove DRM from the dictionaries and re-encode to their respective language, the Kindle does not see them as dictionaries any longer.

Suggestions?

I have a Kindle 3.3 and I don't have any of these problems that you encountered. If I look up a word, the Kindle always chooses the dictionary based on the language of the ebook. The only thing I don't like about it is that it will only display the first match.

If dictionary lookup is very important to you, you might want to consider getting a used K3 Wifi until Amazon fixes the K4 Touch firmware problems.

The problem may be how the dictionaries are encoded. I have the Barrons German and MW Spanish dictionaries. Under Dictionary settings they both show up under English dictionaries.

Just to be on the safe side, you might want to make sure that the dictionaries are properly encoded. The easiest way to do this is opening them with Mobipocket Reader (http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailsreader.asp). To do this, simply copy your dictionaries and some ebooks into the Mobipocket Reader's My eBooks folder and then try to look up a word.
If the dictionaries work, you should get a dictionary popup window showing the name of the dictionary and two flags indicating the dictionary languages.
If you get two identical flags, the dictionaries are not properly encoded and the only way to fix this is to change the dictionary input and output languages in the source code and to re-compile the dictionary.

Unfortunately if you remove DRM from the dictionaries and re-encode to their respective language, the Kindle does not see them as dictionaries any longer.
Theoretically, you shouldn't have to change the language code of a commercial dictionary. BTW, how did you change the language code?

Problem kinda solved. Called Amazon and had them give me a refund for the german and spanish dictionary. Repurchased them again and reinstalled. The Spanish dictionary now installed as a spanish dictionary. Unfortunately the German dictionary was apparently not updated and reinstalled as an English dictionary. I downloaded an inexpensive dictionary and that seemed to work.

Just to be on the safe side, you might want to make sure that the dictionaries are properly encoded. The easiest way to do this is opening them with Mobipocket Reader (http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailsreader.asp). To do this, simply copy your dictionaries and some ebooks into the Mobipocket Reader's My eBooks folder and then try to look up a word.
If the dictionaries work, you should get a dictionary popup window showing the name of the dictionary and two flags indicating the dictionary languages.
If you get two identical flags, the dictionaries are not properly encoded and the only way to fix this is to change the dictionary input and output languages in the source code and to re-compile the dictionary.

Thanks for the info Doitsu, a great help. I tried your suggestion and my French to English dictionary works fine in mobireader for PC showing the correct flags, Makes translating a breeze. Kindle for PC is restricted in this area and does not recognise my dictionary as a dictionary at all, only as a standalone ebook.
I thought my dictionary wasn't coded correctly, therefore I was reading on the forum about checking/changing the input output languages, to get dictionary to work. you just saved me a lot of tinkering around with hex code.

Regards
Andrew

Kindle for PC is restricted in this area and does not recognise my dictionary as a dictionary at all, only as a standalone ebook.
The Kindle software versions for PCs and smartphones only support the default 7 monolingual dictionaries. (English US/UK, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese)
The only way to bypass this limitation is to change the ASIN number of the dictionary that you want to use instead.
(The ASIN number for the default French dictionary is B005F12G6U.)
If you want to use your French-English dictionary with K4PC, create a copy of your dictionary, add or change the ASIN to B005F12G6U and replace the default French dictionary in the My Kindle Content folder with your patched version.
IMHO, the easiest way to change the ASIN is to use the Mobiperl command line tools (https://dev.mobileread.com/dist/tompe/mobiperl/) with the Mobi2Mobi GUI (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21763). (The ASIN is eth type #113.)

Doitsu Hi, Once again you come up with the goods. did some knitting with perl, et voila! worked at treat on K4PC.
I don't own an ereader yet but have been following the Ktouch and Kfire. I read that on the Kfire you can't choose the default primary dictionary or use your own standalone dictionary as lookup. This is pushing me to the Ktouch although I like the idea of colour and web access on the Kfire. Do you think the method you suggested I used on K4PC might work on the Kfire? this would allow for my translation needs and I would get the extras the fire offers.
Also, with your experience do you think I should look at another ereader/tablet?

Many thanks again for you help

Andrew

I read that on the Kfire you can't choose the default primary dictionary or use your own standalone dictionary as lookup.
Since I own a Kindle keyboard, I wouldn't know what the limitations of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch are. I'd be surprised if there were any at all, because on a hardware Kindle 3 Keyboard you could always install any number of (Latin alphabet based) dictionaries while the software versions were limited to one or more monolingual dictionaries.
It seems to me that the thread starter's dictionary problems were caused during the file transfer of the dictionaries that he bought.
Since there's a dedicated Kindle Fire subforum (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=243), it'd best if you asked some Kindle Fire users for feedback.
If the limitations indeed exist, the ASIN hack should work, since all Kindles use ASINs to identify Amazon books.
Also, with your experience do you think I should look at another ereader/tablet?
That's beyond my area of expertise, because I only owned a Kindle so far, but there are countless threads with buying recommendations like this one (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73324&referrerid=91625).

Stingo, yes I tried that within a document, the Chinese dictionary works. Neutral(probably undefined) also works. But you're probably right that specifying to a different language won't work, didn't thoroughly test it though since I don't use the feature.

Alibaba, KT does not support copy & paste. I'm not sure about windows, but I dragged the Chinese dictionary onto my Mac's kindle app, it doesn't work. So it only works on the actual kindle device.

hi Shinew, could you tell me which Chinese dictionary you are using and where i can download it. i've tried one developed by Greg Hewgill http://hewgill.com/hanzidict/. but it didn't show up as a dictionary in the setting. thanks.

Yiming Hi, I found this En/Ch Ch/En dictionary at "https://www.dropbox.com/s/b44t0swhzsdlaof/Concise%20English-Chinese%20Chinese-English%20Dictionary.mobi" Huge one! 37.7Mb. I got kindle for PC app to look-up this dictionary by changing the dictionary's ASIN number to "B005EOCESI" Amazon's Portuguese one, (if you already have the Potuguese one in your kindle content folder remove it). Use the Mobi to perl tools listed by Doitsu earlier in this thread to change the ASIN number. copy the patched dictionary into the kindle content folder. When you read an English book highlight a word and whatever dictionary pops-up, goto the gear wheel icon on the right and from the list choose the Potuguese one. this will continue to look-up the en/ch dictionary in english books until you change it back using the dictionary list again. Because this works on the Kindle PC app it should be the same on the Mac. If you have any porblem with the mobi tools let me know and I will see if I can help.

hi Alibaba32, thanks for the fast response. will try it and post the result.

hi Shinew, could you tell me which Chinese dictionary you are using and where i can download it. i've tried one developed by Greg Hewgill http://hewgill.com/hanzidict/. but it didn't show up as a dictionary in the setting. thanks.

there're a lot here:
http://www.douban.com/note/133902340/

I can confirm that after putting a French-English dictionary in my Kindle Touch documents directory with the USB cable, the Kindle used this dictionary when looking up French words.

I got the dictionary from http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2011/01/05/free-as-in-gpl2-translation-dictionaries-for-the-kindle/

The book is Le Comte de Monte Cristo in mobi format from http://www.gutenberg.org/

Hope this helps as much as this thread helped me!

Welcome to Mobileread.
Glad you enjoyed it. We try to help out as much as we can.

if you use java mobidata editor :http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165729 and change the language of the dictionary and the 2 fileds : to and from, it will work for a text in a language . I succeded with that in french and japanese.
I have trouble with both dictionaries (ie spelling words) but the kindle touch is looking into the right dictionary.