Quote:
Originally Posted by Rojofo
Finally, I am trying to get up the courage to undertake the “jailbreaking” solution but my lack of experience in computing is giving me serious misgivings and I suspect that after all the work and stress involved, the solution may be no better than my Koreader experiment.
|
You are currently trying to figure out how to maintain the style of reading to which you have become accustomed. However, switching to using a Spanish monolingual dictionary instead of a bilingual one, may be more worthy of your sustained effort and concentration, in my opinion. When learning languages, I aspire to use a dictionary in the target language as early as possible.
Disclaimer: I acknowledge that this is not a solution to your problem. Using a monolingual dictionary instead of a bilingual dictionary does not provide the same convenience and reading experience. Looking up words becomes much more disruptive of the reading experience; you have to divert your concentration away from the text, in order to understand the definition of the word you are looking up. So I can totally understand why you might want to stick to using a bilingual dictionary. Better overall dictionary performance is one of the reasons I own Kindles as well as Kobo devices.
So with that said, I still think you should consider using a monolingual dictionary at least part of the time. Learning definitions in the target language is wholesome: instead of increasing your vocabulary by building associations between Spanish and English words, you increase your vocabulary by building associations between Spanish words, and other Spanish words. Instead of "silla = seat", you have "silla = asiento individual con patas y respaldo". Reading definitions in the target language is especially hard at first, because you have to learn the dry, academic style in which dictionary definitions are written. But once you have gotten over this hurdle, think how valuable that knowledge will be! Instead of asking your translator friend to translate a word into English for you, it is like having a monolingual Spanish friend with you, who you can ask "que quiere decir ese palabra", who will explain it to you, in Spanish. It is a more "immersive" way to build vocabulary.