kindle dictionary selection for ebook

[sovre]

I have a Latin ebook which I have sent to my Kindle cloud and which I am trying to read on the kindle app on my iphone. I have confirmed in Cailbre that the language metadata is marked "Latin" - but when I highlight a word I want to look up Kindle does not default to the Latin dictionary I have installed but always to another - and it is not always the same one, it seems to be guessing! Generally I have found that if Kindle gets the default dictionary wrong for a book, when I manually select a dictionary while reading it will stick - but with this ebook no such luck. Any time I want to look up a word, I must manually select the correct dictionary. I should mention that I have other Latin ebooks which do not have this problem, so it isn't universal.

Unlike on the actual Kindle device, there seems to be no way to set set dictionary settings on the iphone app, so I cannot over-ride the app's dictionary deicison.

Anyone know what could be causing this and if there is a way to fix it?

Thanks!

[tomsem]

What about your Latin dictionary? If you go to Settings, Language & Dictionaries, Dictionaries, where does it show up? Is it under Latin, or under English?

The one I have (‘A Digital Latin Dictionary’ by Thomas McCarthy, from Kindle Store) registers as a dictionary for English (‘English-in, English-out’), so it appears as one of choices for the default English dictionary.

I think the use case for this dictionary is to translate Latin words that occur in otherwise English text into English. With older Kindles (at least through Kindle Touch), you could not switch dictionaries without going to Settings, where you could choose Default dictionary of those available for a given language. And to use the Latin dictionary, you would need to go to Settings and make it the default dictionary for English (meaning you could no longer look up English words without switching the Default). Not very convenient.

On newer Kindles there is flexibility to choose any dictionary for any book while you are reading it (as you have been doing), as well as set a default dictionary for each language for which you have more than one dictionary. But this Latin dictionary has not changed, it still cannot be set as default for Latin because it still says it is English-in.

It should be possible to use the calibre metadata editor to change this Latin dictionary and mark it as ‘Latin-in, English-out’ so that it would become automatic default for books marked as Latin (on newer Kindles you could still select it to translate Latin found in other books). I haven’t tried it, but then, I don’t have any Latin books so there would be no benefit to doing so (I can use it as needed without any issue).

If your dictionary is marked ‘Latin-in, English-out’ (as you would expect for most translation dictionaries), then I don’t know what the issue could be.

[PoP]

An old thread where I had possibly a similar problem. I think "latin" is not a supported language for dictionaries.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by PoP

An old thread where I had possibly a similar problem. I think "latin" is not a supported language for dictionaries.

This could be true as well, but maybe it hasn’t been tried lately. Maybe something has changed to make it possible.

[Owl_]

Try to turn both the ebook and dictionary metadatas' language to italian.
For the dictionary mobipocket creator might be needed

[tomsem]

I tried using Latin (la) but Kindle PW4 didn’t recognize that as a Dictionaries language in Settings (just listed it without an associated language).

I then set dictionary input language to [i]Portuguese[/], and it showed up as a Portuguese dictionary.

I used Java Mobi Metadata Editor found here to edit the dictionary:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=165729

I downloaded a Latin ebook from Gutenberg, and (using calibre) changed the language from Latin to Portuguese (since the above editor does not work with ‘dual format mobi’).

However my PW4 did not seem to recognize that it was a ‘Portuguese’ book automatically and I had to manually associate the Latin (‘portuguese’) dictionary. This association survives reading sessions.

I then downloaded a Portuguese language book from Amazon, which triggered downloading of Portuguese-English dictionary. However the Latin dictionary remained the default. And when I opened the book, it ‘knew’ there was a Portuguese dictionary without needing help.

I think perhaps calibre metadata editor is not actually changing the language code properly so that the desired dictionary is found the first time.

Is there a metadata editor that can edit language codes for both formats in place? Or at least dump both sets of metadata so it can be checked?

[jhowell]

There is a language code in the metadata of the book to indicate it's primary language. But the language coded in the HTML content of the book is what gets used for deciding which dictionary to use since different parts of the text may be in different languages.

[tomsem]

I played around with this some.

I used Java Mobi Metadata Editor found here to edit the dictionary language codes:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=165729

There’s no real issue setting the in-language to LA, it just shows up in Dictionaries settings without an associated language.

The part I was unable to get to work was to open a book with Latin language code (say from Gutenberg) and having it automatically find the Latin dictionary. You have to choose it manually, after which it seems to ‘stick’ to that dictionary. So it lacks the desired slickness.

So what if we try using a ‘supported’ language code?

I tried using Portuguese. The dictionary shows up as expected as Portuguese in Dictionaries settings. And it works fine with ebooks that already have the language code set to Portuguese: it finds and opens my pseudo-Portuguese dictionary automatically.

But I was apparently unable to take the (dual format .mobi) Latin - coded book from Gutenberg and change it to Portuguese using calibre. Whatever calibre is changing, Kindle fails to see it is supposed to be Portuguese and doesn’t automatically choose the pseudo-Portuguese dictionary. So we haven’t really gained anything over just changing the dictionary from en-en to pt-en. Or maybe this has been addressed with a newer version of calibre (the one I had at hand is old because it’s the only thing that runs on my old MacBook Pro).

I suppose the solution is to have calibre do extra work to produce either kf8 or a new dual format mobi somehow (mobi to mobi conversion?).

As far as which language codes are supported, it is apparently pretty broad. I accidentally used ‘lt’ (Latvian) and it showed up as such in Dictionaries settings.

But if Amazon supported Latin (probably 2 lines of source code) it would be a little nicer.

[sovre]

thanks to everyone who replied trying to help me with this.

Tomsem,

Yes my Latin dictionary shows up under English and I have it selected as default on my paperwhite (although with this I'm using my iphone to read). I have the same dictionary you do, and I also have the later, more advanced dictionary made by the same guy - "A Latin Lexicon." With some Latin ebooks these work as intended, and get remembered by Kindle after I select them, with others, no.

Thank you for the link to the mobi meta editor. I tried using this app to edit my file and here is what happened.

I saw there was no dictionary input. So I changed the dictionary input to LA as you mentioned doing. I then tried the edited file with the Kindle app - no change. It still doesn't "remember" my dictionary choice. I need to manually select the Latin dictionary each time I look up a word. In the Kindle iphone app it actually shows "French - English" in the box. Of course it isn't actually giving a definition from that dictionary but it seems to be defaulting to it for this file despite the fact the file contains no French!

I assumed there must be some difference between this file and the files I have that remember the Latin dictionary when I select it, so in the mobi editor I opened a Latin book where my dictionary choice is remembered by Kindle. Well, guess what? I don't see any difference. This book also has no input or output dictionary.

So it remains a mystery to me why some files will remember my dictionary selection throughout the whole course of reading, while others forget each time.

Let me say I am not familiar with the technical aspects of all this, so if I have missed something I should have done to make it work, I hope someone will point it out to me.

[PoP]

Originally Posted by jhowell

There is a language code in the metadata of the book to indicate it's primary language. But the language coded in the HTML content of the book is what gets used for deciding which dictionary to use since different parts of the text may be in different languages.

That is how it should be, alas it has never worked for me. In the book I refer to, only the metadata language counts for selecting a dictionary. Even with dictionaries in several languages installed, selecting a word in a specific language (tagged properly in my html?) doesn't cause this language dictionary to be invoked. Can you spot anything that I could be missing?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by PoP

That is how it should be, alas it has never worked for me. In the book I refer to, only the metadata language counts for selecting a dictionary. Even with dictionaries in several languages installed, selecting a word in a specific language (tagged properly in my html?) doesn't cause this language dictionary to be invoked. Can you spot anything that I could be missing?

You are right. I only read in a single language and had not noticed that dictionary lookup does not work the way I think it should.

I did a little more testing on my Kindle and as far as I can tell only the language set in the book's metadata is used for selecting a dictionary, not the languages called out in the HTML content.