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tomsem · 01-26-2017, 05:20 PM

If your goal is to create a custom lookup dictionary for ancient Greek, I think your only option is Kindle. It has always been possible for third parties to create lookup dictionaries for Kindle, as this was defined in the original Mobipocket platform which Amazon bought and has since extended. While there is an ePub spec for 'glossary' tagging, I'm not aware of any examples where it is implemented (would love to learn of any).

In practice, very few third parties have created lookup dictionaries for Kindle, and Amazon has had to license content and create the lookup dictionaries themselves as they have expanded into new markets with new language requirements. That said, you can purchase a Latin-English lookup dictionary (and a few dozen other third party lookup dictionaries) in the Kindle Store and these will work on any Kindle and in some of the Kindle apps (for Fire, iOS, Android). I don't think anyone has published a lookup dictionary for ancient greek, however.

But the format is 'known' (not sure where you can find the spec now, as mobipocket.com is gone), so you can create your own lookup dictionaries. Check the 'Kindle Formats' forum here I think there are some threads about creating lookup dictionaries, and you can google for some more clues. That said, it is not trivial, particularly with a morpheme-laden language like ancient Greek, not to mention testing needed to make sure it all works properly.

Displaying texts in ancient languages on your e-reader should not be an issue. Recent ones will have at least one font that has more or less 'universal' Unicode support. If you are creating your own ePub content from web sites, or old document formats, etc., you may need to deal with some encoding issues, but there are tools for that.

The trend in reading systems seems to be to offer online translation (Kindle, Google Play Books) features. This is often more useful than single-word lookup as you can get entire sentences and paragraphs translated at once. But of course it is not much use for dead languages, at least until Microsoft or Google add those to their translation options.

01-26-2017, 05:20 PM	#2
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,504 Karma: 26425959 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	If your goal is to create a custom lookup dictionary for ancient Greek, I think your only option is Kindle. It has always been possible for third parties to create lookup dictionaries for Kindle, as this was defined in the original Mobipocket platform which Amazon bought and has since extended. While there is an ePub spec for 'glossary' tagging, I'm not aware of any examples where it is implemented (would love to learn of any). In practice, very few third parties have created lookup dictionaries for Kindle, and Amazon has had to license content and create the lookup dictionaries themselves as they have expanded into new markets with new language requirements. That said, you can purchase a Latin-English lookup dictionary (and a few dozen other third party lookup dictionaries) in the Kindle Store and these will work on any Kindle and in some of the Kindle apps (for Fire, iOS, Android). I don't think anyone has published a lookup dictionary for ancient greek, however. But the format is 'known' (not sure where you can find the spec now, as mobipocket.com is gone), so you can create your own lookup dictionaries. Check the 'Kindle Formats' forum here I think there are some threads about creating lookup dictionaries, and you can google for some more clues. That said, it is not trivial, particularly with a morpheme-laden language like ancient Greek, not to mention testing needed to make sure it all works properly. Displaying texts in ancient languages on your e-reader should not be an issue. Recent ones will have at least one font that has more or less 'universal' Unicode support. If you are creating your own ePub content from web sites, or old document formats, etc., you may need to deal with some encoding issues, but there are tools for that. The trend in reading systems seems to be to offer online translation (Kindle, Google Play Books) features. This is often more useful than single-word lookup as you can get entire sentences and paragraphs translated at once. But of course it is not much use for dead languages, at least until Microsoft or Google add those to their translation options. Last edited by tomsem; 01-26-2017 at 05:22 PM.