Dictionary Question for Touch Owners

[twowheels]

I own a K3 and am anxiously awaiting delivery of a PaperWhite. I have a question regarding dictionaries, which I know that nobody can answer for the PaperWhite, but I'm assuming the firmware on the Touch to be similar.

On the product description page, it says that it includes an English dictionary. I seem to remember the Touch including dictionaries in multiple languages. True? Anybody seen anything indicating that the PaperWhite might include a Spanish dictionary as well?

On the Touch, do you have to manually change dictionaries when changing languages? On the K3 I have to go through this horrible process of: Home-->Menu-->Down-->Down-->Down-->Down-->Down-->Settings-->Center Button-->Menu-->Down-->Change Primary Dictionary, THEN I can select the dictionary, then I have to find my way back to my book. I'm hoping that the language of the book is automatically detected and the appropriate dictionary selected.

If it's automatic, can you choose which language dictionary to use for each language? (I'd like the Spanish dictionary to use my Spanish/English dictionary)


I don't read in Spanish on the Kindle as much as I'd like due to the difficulty in changing dictionaries and the amount of D-pad navigation necessary to look up words. I surely hope that this'll be improved!

[tomsem]

On KT (and K4), it matches the book's language metadata to an appropriate dictionary (if there is one). Each language has its own default dictionary. Moreover, if you have more than one dictionary, and the word is not found in the default dictionary, it will 'cascade' to the next dictionary for that language. I haven't tested this extensively, but have encountered this behavior several times.

I would assume KPW will do this too, out of the box.

And yes, it is very much better than K3, which basically ignores language attributes.

[twowheels]

Thaks for the reply! I read the manual, but it's very sparse in this area.

Originally Posted by tomsem

Each language has its own default dictionary.

Am I reading this correctly? You can configure a different dictionary for each language? Or do you mean that the system chooses a default dictionary for each language (other than the primary)?

[ficbot]

tonsem is correct. I read both English and French books and have dictionaries installed for both languages. When I read in English, it uses the English dictionary. When I read in French, it uses the French dictionary. I have not been able to get my Merriam Webster English-French translation dictionary working properly to be recognized as a dictionary for French books (apparently, this can be done if Amazon refunds the book and I repurchase it since it has been corrected). But since there is an easy to use Google Translate option, I have been using that instead when reading in French.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by ficbot

tonsem is correct. I read both English and French books and have dictionaries installed for both languages. When I read in English, it uses the English dictionary. When I read in French, it uses the French dictionary. I have not been able to get my Merriam Webster English-French translation dictionary working properly to be recognized as a dictionary for French books (apparently, this can be done if Amazon refunds the book and I repurchase it since it has been corrected). But since there is an easy to use Google Translate option, I have been using that instead when reading in French.

Yes, the M-W dictionaries have been fixed. Not sure why these don't just show up as something with 'Update Available' in Manage Your Kindle where you could just grab the updates there, but in any case it just takes a call to Amazon to refund and then you can purchase them again if you like.

It is nice to have the (it is actually Bing) Translate feature also since this translates entire sentences and paragraphs at a time.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It is nice to have the (it is actually Bing) Translate feature also since this translates entire sentences and paragraphs at a time.

Oh? Something else I didn't know about? How does that work? Do you highlight a phrase?

[Vroo]

BTW - firmware 3.4 for Kindle Keyboard changed the default behaviour (that the English dictionary was displayed for all books) and it now matches the metadata between books and dictionaries, just like on K4.

I have a report that someone managed to use Russian-English (!) dictionary (downloaded from http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=472141) for books in Russian.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Vroo

BTW - firmware 3.4 for Kindle Keyboard changed the default behaviour (that the English dictionary was displayed for all books) and it now matches the metadata between books and dictionaries, just like on K4.

I have a report that someone managed to use Russian-English (!) dictionary (downloaded from http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=472141) for books in Russian.

Nice! I'll be trying that...

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Oh? Something else I didn't know about? How does that work? Do you highlight a phrase?

Yes, (on Kindle Touch) you select a sentence or paragraph (don't know what the max length is), and in addition to Highlight/Add Note/Share there is a More... button with Wikipedia/Translation/Report Content Error options. The Translation dialog lets you pick From and To language and then it pulls in the translated text. The quality of the translation is sometimes not so great, but having it available at all is very helpful.

Wish languages included Latin, and that there were a way to copy the translated text to a Note, but it is pretty nice as-is.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by Vroo

BTW - firmware 3.4 for Kindle Keyboard changed the default behaviour (that the English dictionary was displayed for all books) and it now matches the metadata between books and dictionaries, just like on K4.

I have a report that someone managed to use Russian-English (!) dictionary (downloaded from http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=472141) for books in Russian.

That's nice... unfortunately I lost all ability to use dictionaries altogether. :-(

I guess I'll be doing some rebooting and resetting of the default dictionary...

EDIT: It's working again... I just had to set the default... isn't auto switching to Spanish, but it might be my Spanish/English dictionary, which was an open source freebie that I got a long time ago -- might not have metadata set.

EDIT2: Got a newer version of my Spanish/English dictionary and it WORKS!! Awesome!!!