Copying a Single Word in the Kindle iPad application

[svenlind]

When you press a word in the Kindle iPad application, then you search the built in dictionary, and it works very well indeed.

You also get the opportunity to "Note", "Highlight" and "Share". Why not a "Copy" option? I am Danish and I have an English to Danish dictionary on my iPad and it would be very convenient to be able to paste the word into this dictionary. The built in English to English dictionary is very often good enough, but sometimes it would be nice with a translation into Danish.

An example: the word Sparrow
will give this answer in an English to English dictionary:
a small finch-like Old World bird related to the weaver birds, typically with brown and grey plumage... and so on.

In English to Danish it is simply Spurv a very common bird

I am aware that copy paste might be problematic for copyright reasons, but really, it can't be a problem with a single word!

[Doitsu]

I cannot help you with your specific problem, but it's relatively easy to generate a Kindle dictionary from a tab-delimited word list.
The problem is finding a decent free Danish list. For Swedish there's Folkets lexikon. but there doesn't seem to be similar Danish list. (You can also convert StarDict dictionaries and many other dictionary formats with pyGlossary to and from tab-delimited files.)
If you somehow managed to create an English-Danish Kindle dictionary, you could make it the default dictionary and wouldn't have to copy words.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

If you somehow managed to create an English-Danish Kindle dictionary, you could make it the default dictionary and wouldn't have to copy words.

Well, this is interesting at least for my Kindle, but you can't change the default dictionary in the iPad Kindle application.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Well, this is interesting at least for my Kindle, but you can't change the default dictionary in the iPad Kindle application.

I don't have an iPad, but if the iPad Kindle app is like the Kindle for PC or iPhone apps, you can make it use a different dictionary by deleting the the default English dictionary and sideloading another dictionary with the same ASIN number.

(Oxford American Dictionary ASIN: B003ODIZL6 / Oxford Dictionary of English ASIN: B003WUYRGI)

I.e. all you have to do is create a .mobi dictionary, open it with the Java Mobi Metadata Editor and add the ASIN number of one of the English dictionaries.

Then simply delete the dictionary whose ASIN you used and sideload your own dictionary.

[susan_cassidy]

Correctly creating a mobipocket format dictionary is non-trivial. To get inflected words, etc, you need special formatting. See: http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...e=indexing.htm.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Correctly creating a mobipocket format dictionary is non-trivial. To get inflected words, etc, you need special formatting. See: http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...e=indexing.htm.

You are right of course. It is a job for professionals to make a good dictionary. I will probably never get a decent English to Danish dictionary for my Kindle.
But a simple copy/paste of a single word in my iPad would be very nice.
I have sent a feature request for the Kindle iPad application to Amazon.

[tvjohn]

Originally Posted by svenlind

When you press a word in the Kindle iPad application, then you search the built in dictionary, and it works very well indeed.

You also get the opportunity to "Note", "Highlight" and "Share". Why not a "Copy" option? I am Danish

...

As we're hopefully going on a cycling holiday in your very nice Country sometime soon, I thought I'd better take a look at this

I've just picked up my iPad, opened Kindle, picked a book at random, tapped a
word, ignored those 3 options you mention, & at the bottom of the screen the dictionary (English currently) definition appears, along with a small i symbol. Pressing that pops up a window giving me an array of dictionaries to choose from. I chose French, as that's the only one I have a fighting chance of understanding

Another popup window appears inviting me to download the free dictionary. Sadly Danish isn't one of them, but it might be worth investigating the possibility of getting one?

I'll take another look later just in case I can find more.

HTH.