Interfacing with dictionaries

[Chris Jones]

What android reader application would you recommend for someone who does most of his reading in a variety of foreign languages?

Since my command of the written form of these languages varies from close to "native speaker" to beginner/intermediate there are circumstances where I need to look up words quite frequently.

Or course I could switch between the reading application and a web browser that I would point to online dictionaries... but such strategy quickly becomes a bit of a drag as soon as you need to look up a dozen or more words per page.

So I am wondering if anybody has this type of reading experience and could recommend an app that lets you look up words fairly transparently - i.e. with minimal fuss & without leaving the reader app.

Requirements:

1. Availability of both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries is essential. By "bilingual" I mean "foreign language" to English

2. Serious dictionaries: dictionaries that list the different meanings of a word and provide usage examples as well as related idioms

3. Inexpensive or free (as in beer) dictionaries: I am talking about half a dozen languages ... this kind of thing adds up quicker than you'd think.. and I don't fancy ending up spending hundreds of dollars if I can avoid it... :-)

4. No "exotic" languages at this point... only need romance & germanic languages coverage

To clarify: I do realize that even in Google's minimal pre-installed reader ("Play Books") I can tap and hold a word for a second or so and the ensuing popup will let me choose to have the word "google-translated"... but that's not exactly the kind of dictionary look-ups I have in mind... :-)

I would value advice from technical people who are not multilingual but I suspect that this request is best answered by folks who have had a comparable experience.

Thanks,

CJ


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[dickloraine]

Most readers on android allow this. Some of the most known: mantano, moon reader, fbreader. These three use another app for dictionary purposes: color dict. Color dict uses dictionaries in the stardic format. You can find free dictionaries for many languages in that format. Inside the reader apps, you just long tap a word and you get a popup with the translation. You can use as many dictionaries simultaneously as you like and color dic also can search wikipedia, if you are currently online.

[nhedgehog]

I recommend AlReader in combination with Fora Dict and Fora Memo.

Why?
There are a number of good reading apps with dictionary support (FBReader, KoReader, Coolreader, Moonreader+, AlReader ...). Every one has its pros and cons.
But AlReader has an interesting feature for those who like to read in foreign languages.

AlReader is storing every looked up word in a file called:
dictionary_word.txt

There is an app called Fora Memo, which is able to open this file and use it as learning database. Fora Memo needs Fora Dict to look up those words. Actually there is a possibility in Fora Dict to store looked up words too. But you have to tell the app it every time to store it (file is called wordlist.properties). Fora Memo can open this file as learning database too.

Fora Dict is, as other dictionary apps too, supporting a variety of different dictionary formats, including stardict.

[Chris Jones]

Originally Posted by nhedgehog

I recommend AlReader in combination with Fora Dict and Fora Memo.

Why?
There are a number of good reading apps with dictionary support (FBReader, KoReader, Coolreader, Moonreader+, AlReader ...). Every one has its pros and cons.
But AlReader has an interesting feature for those who like to read in foreign languages.

AlReader is storing every looked up word in a file called:
dictionary_word.txt

There is an app called Fora Memo, which is able to open this file and use it as learning database. Fora Memo needs Fora Dict to look up those words. Actually there is a possibility in Fora Dict to store looked up words too. But you have to tell the app it every time to store it (file is called wordlist.properties). Fora Memo can open this file as learning database too.

Fora Dict is, as other dictionary apps too, supporting a variety of different dictionary formats, including stardict.

Thank you for your interest.

I have extensively put to the test the reader apps and dictionaries that you recommend over these past few weeks and I suppose they all have their good points but I can't say I was happy with any of them. To put it in a nutshell... they generally remind me of old Windows applications designed twenty years ago rather than native Android stuff. Bottom line... the design & programming never let you forget that you're using software that incidentally lets you read a book.. rather than successfully emulating the feel of reading a printed book.

I looked at the dictionaries and found that the Livio line best covers my needs.. lots of content, including pronunciation, etymology, locutions... and sometimes quick and dirty translations of the word in a number of other popular languages.

Apart from English... Livio cover the four main languages of Western Europe (German, Spanish, French, Italian).. which considering their dictionaries come free of charge is not bad at all. Like Fora the Livio apps let you refer to a history of (up to) your last 1,000 lookups, something I find quite useful. One issue with these dictionaries is that they are based on the wiktionaries and as a result are more at the the work-in-progress stage and there are quite a few glaring holes... Even some commonly used words I am familiar with and I just need a quick reminder are altogether missing. The ergonomics also can be a little surprising -- don't I love it when for instance I get a "abcdefS: plural form of abcdef" and nothing else is displayed... amusing at first.. less so after a while & it does tend to happen a little too often... and worse case scenario.... after you manually enter "abcdef"... the app occasionally returns: "word not found"... or "did you mean such and such..." and provide a list of alternatives. Seriously, if the software is able to detect that whatever you are looking up is the plural (conjugated form... etc.) of something... why don't they take you there right away...!?

Quite by chance I eventually found one reader app that I do like. I hadn't bothered trying it out initially because it is called "PocketBook"... and since this happens to be the name of a brand of e-reading devices that I had heard of (popular in Europe.. I believe?) I thought it was just a front-end meant to provide easy access to the brand's online store.. along the same lines as the Kindle/Kobo/Nook reader apps. Where in fact it is a full-fledged general purpose epub reader with a really neat user interface that corresponds exactly to what I was looking for (a bit like Google Play Books in essence but with external dictionary support... and it does not force you to store your books in your Google library.

Unfortunately, this PocketBook reader is somewhat buggy (randomly brings up a popup telling you that it has stopped working... for reasons untold... and you have to restart it... occasionally becomes unresponsive with a gray-ish or black background... sometimes opens the wrong book when invoked from another program such as a web browser or a file explorer..).

But perhaps its worst shortcoming in the context of mobile devices with limited storage space is that it does not play well with "network libraries". One thing in particular that bothers me is that it downloads a permanent copy of any e-book you access off of your cloud storage to your local drive. Nothing wrong with keeping a temporary copy of the file for performance reasons... but leaving it lying around (and in a non-obvious place to boot) once you've finished reading the book doesn't make sense.

CJ

[peaceridge]

Chris, I use PocketBook for everything but pdf files - I keep trying new reader software, but have found nothing as stable as PocketBook. What device are you using it on? Since I have an android tablet and use calibre companion, and generally do not have internet access, all my books are stored on the tablet.

I am curious as you were looking for a reader to be able to use a dictionary. Does Pocketbook do that for you? So far, unless I'm online, I can't get Pocketbook to use a dictionary.

[HarryT]

The Kindle App has by far the best dictionaries around, as in the market-leading commercial dictionaries, both mono- and bilingual.

[Chris Jones]

Originally Posted by peaceridge

Chris, I use PocketBook for everything but pdf files - I keep trying new reader software, but have found nothing as stable as PocketBook. What device are you using it on? Since I have an android tablet and use calibre companion, and generally do not have internet access, all my books are stored on the tablet.

I am curious as you were looking for a reader to be able to use a dictionary. Does Pocketbook do that for you? So far, unless I'm online, I can't get Pocketbook to use a dictionary.

The device I use is a Nexus 7.2 running Android L.

The rather odd problem I mentioned earlier occurs when I repeatedly use the Google gDrive app to access my online library and this is what happens:

When I tap on an epub's icon in the gDrive app... instead of PocketBook opening on page 1 of the epub it opens on page 3 or 4 and displays a blank page with some kind of stippled gray background. At that point I am unable to turn pages. The app is not really frozen since I am able to bring up the "books" menu (the one that's hidden to the left of the screen and that you can drag into view that has four tabs: the book's details, table of contents, bookmarks, notes...) as well as the circular menu (that provides quick access to a bunch of settings) and the two sidebars. If I tap the books icon in the top left corner of the screen, I am able to close the book and return to the PocketBook's home screen— the one that displays the library's contents.. recently read books... etc. Now once this starts happening.. if I go back to the gDrive app and open another book.... sometimes the same thing repeats itself... and sometimes PB opens a different book than the one I am trying to access... usually a book that I had opened a little earlier... perhaps the last one it displayed before this started happening...

Mind you... I have not looked into it as yet and for all I know there may be something wrong with those epub's... with gDrive.. with some of the stuff in between the couch and the tablet... who knows...

As to the dictionaries... here's what I did:

I installed the five Livio dictionary apps (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian)... switched to PB and opened a book... brought up the short context menu (a small horizontal ribbon with c. 5-6 icons).. tapped the one that stands for settings (looks like some kind of cogwheel)—you need to long-tap in a spot away from any text to bring up this "short" context menu... otherwise the long-tap would select a word and bring up the "long" context menu⁽¹⁾ (the one that's customizable and in my setup at least includes the dictionary lookup option—some icon that has chinese ideogram 文 and the latin letter A connected by a thick double-pointed arrow. This brings up a full-screen menu with 4 entries. The bottom one is "Translation program". Tapping this entry will display a list of all the dictionary apps installed on your system that PocketBook knows about⁽²⁾. I selected the Livio dictionary for the appropriate language... hit the back button.. and the rest is history.

Or so it should... The trouble is that if you need access to more than one dictionary you have to change this setting manually each time you switch to a book written in a different language... Even when you come back to a book for which you have already set the dictionary. It would make better sense if PocketBook let you set a default dictionary for every language you use once and for all and from then on switch dictionaries automatically each time you open a book according to the language specified in the book's metadata.

I've only used this device at home so I hadn't given the on/off-lineness of the Livio dictionaries much thought: I am always online when I am at home. A quick test after disconnecting the WiFi reveals that dictionary lookups appear to work exactly the same as with the WiFi on and provide excactly the same content. I used the lookup history of the Spanish dictionary and checked half a dozen words and couldn't spot any difference. In the event the definitions might have been cached locally I also checked a few random words that I was pretty sure I had never looked up... same. So I guess these Livio dictionaries are offline dictionaries.

Note, that as far as I can remember you MUST bring up the settings via what I call the short context menu⁽³⁾ to access this option. I remember running into this particular option while "unboxing" PocketBook.. didn't make a note where I'd found it at the time... and it took me a while to find it again when I needed it...

The odd thing with PB is that it is not really intuitive/discoverable on first contact and tends to be a little confusing for maybe the first hour you use it... BUT once you get over this (minor) hurdle it provides the closest experience to reading a printed book in terms of ease of use of all the readers I have tried... I guess there has to be some kind of design tradeoff involved here... And it's not necessarily a bad thing... since you only "unbox" the app once but you get to use it many many times...

CJ

⁽¹⁾ I just checked and there is also a settings icon on this longer ribbon/context menu and it also brings up the full-screen settings menu where you can change the "translation program" option.

⁽²⁾ Which suggests that if you don't want to use Livio you may use Fora... Goldendict... instead...

⁽³⁾ Or the long context menu/ribbon... as I found out a couple of minutes ago...

[peaceridge]

Thanks Chris, I would never have thought to look under translate! Off to load some dictionaries and see how I like it!

[jumpjack]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Color dict uses dictionaries in the stardic format. You can find free dictionaries for many languages in that format. Inside the reader apps, you just long tap a word and you get a popup with the translation. You can use as many dictionaries simultaneously as you like and color dic also can search wikipedia, if you are currently online.

I can't figure out how to add to ColorDict a downloaded StarDict english-italian dictionary, can you help?

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by jumpjack

I can't figure out how to add to ColorDict a downloaded StarDict english-italian dictionary, can you help?

Look for a dictdata folder on your Android device and copy the dict, idx, ifo and syn files to that folder. If your device has multiple partitions, it should be the same location where you can also see the Download, Movies and Pictures folders.
(If the dictdata folder doesn't exist, create it with a file manager.)

If ColorDict doesn't display the dictionary, you might have to reindex all dictionaries:

1. Open ColorDict
2. Tap the folder icon next to the 3 dots.
3. Tap the 3 dots and select Reindex.