Sage How to install Russian Keyboard (or fully Russian lang)

[Geert]

Hi guys,

Today I received my Kobo Sage and I intend to use it for learning the Russian Language. So for me, the most important feature, is to have a good Russian pop-up dictionary with which I can quickly look up words that are not know to me.

The issue is, there is no dictionary, where I can ALWAYS find the word that I don't know. (actually, I feel the miss rate is about 40%. Meaning 40% of the words that I want to look up, are not found in the dictionary.) I am already using the best stardict dictionary I could find, so using a better dictionary won't help much.

But what would help, is if I could actually type in Russian words in the dictionary, so I can search for the lemma's, instead of the inflicted words (because that is mostly the problem). But There is no Cyrillic keyboard to type in lemmas.

So, is it possible to do either of the following:
1. Install a Cyrillic keyboard?
2. Put the Language of the whole device to "Russian"
3. Add a custom "Search" to an online dictionary I know works well (like wiktionary or openrussian.org)

If it requires some programming, that would be no issue for me.

[DNSB]

One of the KoboPatch items was a Cyrillic keyboard but I'm not sure if it has ever been updated to work on the Sage. You might want to back up your user visible partition before trying to play with it. See this thread for the latest version: Instructions for patching firmware 4.33.19611.

[Geert]

@DNSB, I am confused. When I check my device information, it says that the "software version" is already 4.33.19611. Would it help to patch using that site to unlock the cyrillic keyboard feature? Also, I can't seem to find information which patch has cyrilic keyboard in it?

[DNSB]

You need to be on the firmware version the patch applies to. What you need to do is to download the firmware and the patch file following the instructions in the first message in that message thread. You will find the Cyrillic keyboard patch in the libnickel.so.1.0.0.yaml file in the src directory. Simply change the no after enabled to yes.

Cyrillic Keyboard (GloHD/ClaraHD/AuraOne/H2O2):
  # Updated by Bald Eagle for 4.18.13737 (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=84)
  - Enabled: yes

Please note that I do not know if this patch will work for 4.33.19611 but I think that it should.

• Download the firmware file
• Download the patch file.
• Unzip the patch file which will create several files and directories
• Copy the firmware .zip file into the src directory. Do not unzip it.
• Take a look at the .yaml files in the src directory. Enable those patches in those .yaml files you want to try. I suggest doing one or two to start.
• Run the kobopatch.bat (for Windows) or the kobopatch.sh (Linux or MacOSX). Don't forget the ./ before the filename for Linux or MacOSX.
• If successful, this will leave a KoboRoot.tgz and a log.txt file in the out directory. Copy the KoboRoot.tgz file to the .kobo directory on your Kobo, safely eject it and it should reboot and install the patches.
• If not successful, there are two options. The error was so early in the process, the log.txt file was not written. Generally, an indicator of a tying error in a .yaml file. If the error occurred later, the log.txt file will indicate where the error occurred.

I've attached an image of what you should see in the src directory.

Good luck!

[Geert]

uwu, that is pretty cool. I am going to give it a try.

[Bald Eagle]

• Replacing the symbols keyboard with a Cyrillic one is easy with geek1011s excellent patch system, as explained above. You can even move the keys around, its simple pattern matching. The default should get you started nicely. Even if it doesn't mention the Sage explicitly I would expect it to work.
• Adding a dictionary is as simple as adding it to the .kobo/custom-dict directory. That, of course depends on the quality of your dictionary. You might want to look here.
• Setting the device interface to another language I would have put to Kobo, but this line in the kobopatch.yaml (from the above excellent patch system)
  

  # Uncomment the following to add translations (replace lc with the language code)
  # translations:
  #   src/whatever.ts: usr/local/Kobo/translations/trans_lc.qm

  suggests that it could be possible. Of course, you would have to get hold of all the language keys and do the translation.
• As for online search, I wouldn't know as my device is always offline, but, again, from the patch system, there is this patch
  

  Change Wikipedia search language:
    - Enabled: no
    - Description: |
        The patch set the search language in Wikipedia.
        Replace the "en" (in both the replace_string lines) to language code you want.
        For example English is "en" (set as default), for German is "de", for Russian is "ru".
    - FindReplaceString:
        Find:    "\0https://%1.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search\0"
        Replace: "\0https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search\0"
    - FindReplaceString:
        Find:    "\0https://%1.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search\0"
        Replace: "\0https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search\0"

  which might give you at least wikipedia, and at best let you link to a search platform of your choice.
  The replacement should not be longer than the original.

The one downside to using the patches is they need to be reapplied to each new firmware version (with the correct patch files). You may want to switch off automatic firmware updates in that case.

[Geert]

OK, I did some research, and will spend this Friday on making 3 changes:

1. make a custom ru->en dictionary out of this excellent wiktionary dump: https://kaikki.org/dictionary/Russian/ .

2. I will change the google search or wikipedia search into a google translate search like this:

https://translate.google.com/?sl=ru&tl=en&text=Special:Search&op=translate

3. Finally, add the cyrillic keyboard,

Then we almost have a perfect russian language learning device The only thing is that "My Words" is not saving lemmas, but forms of the words as they are found in the text, but I can live with that. I will update this post as soon as I have the custom dictionary (and add it to that dictionary thread)

[Geert]

I made the custom ru->en dictionary. You can download it in the dictionary topic over here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...postcount=1099

[Quoth]

I don't know. I'd start with looking at the products of a company expert at teaching languages and then use whatever materials they have.

An eink for me is #1 for reading fiction. I see someone at the minute trying to use a Kobo to learn Japanese.

I think any ereader would be bottom of my list as tool for learning another language, except to read ebooks appropriate to my progress. And over the years I have experience of learning four languages. I've never learnt Irish, but at least have an idea of the pronunciation, which obviously doesn't follow the rules of French, German, English etc.

It used to be you needed a record-player, then a cassette player. It's more likely now an App and the Internet.

[Geert]

Thanks for the advice. For beginner language learners, yes, you wouldn't want to start by picking up a random book in your target language. However, if you want to master a language, you need to immerse yourself in the language and reading books is one great and proven way of doing that. And when you are at such a level, then why not to read a book on an e-reader with a popup dictionary at hand?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Geert

Thanks for the advice. For beginner language learners, yes, you wouldn't want to start by picking up a random book in your target language. However, if you want to master a language, you need to immerse yourself in the language and reading books is one great and proven way of doing that. And when you are at such a level, then why not to read a book on an e-reader with a popup dictionary at hand?

Yes, once you are proficient you can read the books on an ereader. I'd check first the languages are officially supported before buying a model, though you might get by with simply using Calibre to embed the required fonts (that won't work on some ereaders for some languages). Unless you are proof reading in the language you don't need a different keyboard simply to press on a word, but again if the language isn't officially supported any dictionary may be poor.

I often find words in French or English in older books not in the dictionaries.