Best choice for linguist. Dictionaries, etc.

[Archilochus]

Hello All,

I’ve been researching e-readers over the last several months and still have not been able to determine the best choice. Before throwing money at it and just buying, I thought I’d post a message here to receive some information from users with more knowledge and experience, which I appreciate.

English, Spanish and Italian are the languages in which I’ll be reading. The device will be used solely to read free, public domain works; no DRM-protected files. I do not expect to ever purchase an e-book, and if that expectation were to change in the future, I could probably live with any of the ecosystems. It would be used to read the classics and the main literary figures from say the Renaissance to the 20th century (Dante, Shakespeare, Quevedo, Dickens, Austin, Brönte, Balzac, blah, blah).

Issues:

BUILT-IN DICTIONARIES (MOST IMPORTANT): As a professional linguist and student, this is the decisive factor. However, the rest of the factors make the choice difficult, because I have not been able to find the “perfect” device. Also critical is for dictionaries to function with PDF.

SUPPORTED FILE FORMATS: I think e-pub and PDF would suffice, although txt, doc, html and some others might come in handy. The issue here is that some texts might only be available in PDF, and their display and handling is not ideal on an e-reader.

SCREEN SIZE: the ubiquitous 6" screen. For those of us who wear reading glasses and like to work with large screen computer displays and at least 12 point font sizes, the 6-inch screen seems like something that might be hard to get used to. Sure, you can make the fonts larger, but then, doesn’t that mean flipping pages, say, every 10 seconds? There are a few options with larger screen sizes, but then they fall short with respect to other factors, and also cost more.

CONNECTIVITY: Not really important. I’m fine with downloading epubs and pdfs separately and putting them on a microSD. In fact, most of the time I won’t want to be connected anywhere. Don’t use Facebook or any “social” media, don’t want Big Brothers sending me messages, tracking what I read, “helping” me, making “suggestions” and the like – it gives me the creeps. I just want a device packed with books and dictionaries so I can read the former while using the latter – in three languages. Period. And that is why the dictionaries must be built-in. I don’t want to have to be connected to the Internet to look up a word; to me, that’s moronic.

That I think pretty much sums up the issues. Now for the choices I know of.

Kindle
The good: comes with good monolingual dictionaries in each of the three languages I’ve mentioned.
The bad: no bilingual dictionaries, locked into AZW format, would have to convert epubs, I believe Amazon keeps track of what you have loaded on your Kindle, you MUST register it with them, and more.

Sony PRS-T2 (the choice I’m leaning toward):
The good: Twelve dictionaries. However, five are English monolingual and seven bilingual. Therefore, if I am reading in Spanish and want to look up a word, I’ll get the translation in English, but what if I don’t know what it means in English either? Same if I’m reading in Italian. Doh! Rather dumb decision on their part. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of have bilingual dictionaries for all my languages, but just one monolingual is short-sighted. But five monolinguals in the same language? Duh! Why not five monolinguals in five different languages? Am I missing something? Please.
The bad: Lack of additional monolingual dictionaries (else I probably would have already bought it). Plus, I hate Sony. Over-priced, proprietary hardware (past experiences with Vaios, camcorder memory sticks, etc.).

ICARUS: The eXceL 9.7" looked very interesting. I wrote to them to ask about dictionaries, and I get the following stupid response:

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Dear,

Thank you for your email.

There are a lot of dictionaries available on the internet which you can download and install on your device.

It's available in Bi or Monolingual as well.

Best Regards,

Icarus Supportteam
----------------------------------------------------

A 230 euro device and that it is the laconic, non-answer I get? Not a great first experience in communicating with the company. What dictionaries? Are they free? Are they good? Or if I look up “dog” will I find a one-word definition like “animal” or a picture of Lassie? How do I use them? Tap the word? Geez. Don’t these companies understand that the exclusive purpose of an e-reader is to read, and that that endeavor intrinsically ties into something called “a dictionary”? I don’t get it.

KOBO: The Aura had good reviews. But talk about a crappy website. Finding the manual should be a matter of seconds, not an expedition. Anyway, in it, I find the following passage:

“Your Kobo eReader has a built-in dictionary that you can use while reading ***Kobo eBooks***. The dictionary ***may not work if you're reading books from other sources, such as books you get from a public library, or free eBooks you’ve found on the Internet. The dictionary also does not work with PDFs. ***”

Isn’t that just grand (sigh). Of course, don’t even bother to inform the user of the names of your limited dictionaries and mention whether they are mono- or bilingual; no, that would be too much to expect.

Nook: so discouraged I haven’t yet bothered.

Finally, the last issue has to do with tablets. I’ve read and heard over and over, that if you do a lot of reading, a tablet will tire your eyes. Is this true? Or would a tablet perhaps be a better choice? Will I have the option to tap and look up a word on a tablet?

Otherwise, based on the above, which e-reader would you think comes closest to meeting my needs?

I thank you in advance for your time.

Cordially yours,
Archilochus

[HarryT]

Having owned Sony readers, which do indeed have good dictionaries, I can say that the Kindle's dictionaries are significantly better and, perhaps of interest, should you want a dictionary that's not supplied with it, there's an excellent range of good commercial dictionaries available to buy in the Kindle Store.

Given that you say that "The device will be used solely to read free, public domain works" the fact that it doesn't read ePub files is totally irrelevant; it's just as easy to find public domain works in Kindle format as in ePub, and trivial to convert ePub to the Kindle's format with tools such as Calibre. Amazon does not "keep track of what you have loaded on your Kindle".

Whether or not a tablet will "hurt your eyes" is very much a personal matter. I read an awful lot on my iPad (it's a far better choice than an eInk device for PDFs and books which benefit from colour illustrations), and I'm absolutely fine with it, although I far prefer the eInk Kindle for reading fiction. I honestly think that the fundamental problem most people have with backlit tablets is that they have the screen brightness turned up far too high.

Hope that's of some help to you.

[robko]

Originally Posted by Archilochus

KOBO: The Aura had good reviews. But talk about a crappy website. Finding the manual should be a matter of seconds, not an expedition. Anyway, in it, I find the following passage:

“Your Kobo eReader has a built-in dictionary that you can use while reading ***Kobo eBooks***. The dictionary ***may not work if you're reading books from other sources, such as books you get from a public library, or free eBooks you’ve found on the Internet. The dictionary also does not work with PDFs. ***”

The Kobo dictionaries won't likely meet your standards. I don't use the dictionaries a lot so I don't have issues with it, but I've seen enough people complain that they are very good to know that a heavy user like yourself won't like them. The dictionary WILL work with pretty much anything other than pdf, and it doesn't work with pdf since there is no pdf reflow so it's treating the text basically like an image rather than text.

[llcj]

Hi Harry,

In what way are the Kindle's dictionaries superior to those on Sony readers? I was always under the impression that they were equally good. I was considering purchasing a Sony reader because of this and because of the good deals available locally on the new Sony reader.

Thanks

[HarryT]

More words, and more complete definitions. The Sony's dictionaries are good, but the Kindle's are definitely better.

[Archilochus]

Thank you all for your responses. Here's more specific info for the Sonys (EUROPEAN VERSION - US/CANADA COMES WITH LESS)

PRS-T2
NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH
OXFORD HACHETTE FR-EN
COLLINS DE-EN
OXFORD SPANISH EN-ES (have this and it is superb)
COLLINS EN-IT (have this, very good)
VAN DALE POCKETWOORDENBOEK NL-EN

---
PRS-T3 - ALL THE ABOVE, PLUS THREE ADDITIONAL MONOLINGUALS (DE, FR, ES):

DUDEN-WISSENSNETZ DEUTSCHE SPRACHE
MULTIDICTIONNAIRE DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE
DICCIONARIO GENERAL DE LENGUA ESPAÑOLA VOX

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I might be mistaken, but this is my current understanding of Kindle e-readers: The devices include one or more monolingual dictionaries for each of the supported menu languages,

English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese,

but that is it. Additional dictionaries can be added, but must be purchased. I believe the English monolinguals are the same as Sony's. I think the Spanish is Diccionario de la Real Academia, and I can't remember the rest. The monolinguals are indeed very good.

It would be great if someone with a European Kindle could provide a quick list of exactly what dictionaries came installed in their device. It infuriates me that none of these vendors provide this specific information.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Archilochus

I might be mistaken, but this is my current understanding of Kindle e-readers: The devices include one or more monolingual dictionaries for each of the supported menu languages,

English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese,

but that is it. Additional dictionaries can be added, but must be purchased. I believe the English monolinguals are the same as Sony's. I think the Spanish is Diccionario de la Real Academia, and I can't remember the rest. The monolinguals are indeed very good.

You are correct about the Kindle dictionaries, but you're not correct about them being the same as the Sony's dictionaries. Although both the Sony and the Kindle have English dictionaries based on Oxford English dictionaries, the Kindle's dictionary is a lot more comprehensive than the Sony's.