Troubleshooting Kindle 4 - dictionary problem

[blekm]

I've 3 dictionary on my Kindle 4 (2 english + 1 italian). I always read italian books and the italian dictionary works great.

Now, I wanna read an english book and I try to see if the other (english) dictionary works. But it doesn't. I move the cursor on a word and no option for english dictionary. But for some words, that are into the italian language, it show me the italian description (so seems to me that the Italian dictionary is always active as default) .

1) how I can tell him "Use english dictionary now". Can be fine if I can tell him "Use English" or "Use Italian"

2) I've bought an English - Italian Dictionary, but it doesn't appear under Settings -> Dictionary. It's on the Kindle, of course.. how to use it?

Thanks for help

[tomsem]

Kindle 4, like Kindle Touch (with the latest update) will automatically select a dictionary that corresponds to the language of the book. The language for the book is one element of its metadata (and at least in HTML can be overridden by applying appropriate 'lang' attributes). So if the book is tagged as 'English' it will try to find a dictionary with English lookup. If Italian, it will look for an Italian dictionary.

I can think of two possible issues: 1) the book doesn't have proper language metadata set 2) Kindle hasn't 'registered' the presence of the English dictionaries somehow (Settings-->Dictionary should show 'English' along with an option to select one of the two English dictionaries you have).

Regarding 2), there have been some reports that dictionary lookup stopped working after applying a software update. I know first hand of such a case with Kindle Touch, and K4 also got an update recently; perhaps it has a similar issue. The workaround is to Archive the English dictionaries (assuming you got them from Amazon) and then download again. Then go to the dictionary settings and select the default you want for English.

As for 1) I would first download another english book (say from gutenburg.org) and see if dictionary lookup works with that. If it works, it means you need to fix the book where the dictionary lookup is not working. The free tool, calibre, will provide the ability to set the language metadata (I believe even without needing to strip DRM, if this is a book from Amazon).

[blekm]

I had download metadata for the english book from Amazon, and now on Kindle the dictionary used is the english one, great.

The question now is: I've already read 50 books on Kindle, and never before I download the metadata. How the Kindle knew that the book were in italian? :-/

I've bought this one

http://www.amazon.it/English-Italian...1992304&sr=1-2

but I don't know how to use it, I don't see it into Settings->Dictionary

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by blekm

I've bought this one

http://www.amazon.it/English-Italian...1992304&sr=1-2

Most likely the dictionary was formatted as an ebook and not as dictionary. Try opening it with Java Mobi Metadata Editor.
In the Editor, click the Language button. If the Dictionary input and output fields values are "Unspecified," it's not formatted as a dictionary.

BTW, you generate your own dictionary from a tab-delimited word list following these instructions.