Odyssey Bookeen looking for Dictionary Beta testers

[TheSFReader]

In their new blog, Bookeen expresses their need for Beta Testers
So if you want an English dictionaryfor your Odyssey, it seems a good direction...

[DuckieTigger]

thanks for providing the link - i just signed up after seeing eowyns post in other thread. too bad there is no german option yet - that is my native language. but then again i now exclusively read in english.

[EowynCarter]

I asked for german too. The one language i would know enough to read but not enough so as to need a dictionary.

[Lupin]

Great. I applied for participation too. There should be a dictionary for most European languages, but somehow I feel that it won't happen.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Lupin

Great. I applied for participation too. There should be a dictionary for most European languages, but somehow I feel that it won't happen.

oh give it some time. i am actually pleasantly surprised that the english and italian dictionaries are up for beta-test already so shortly after the odyssey got released. it is possible that bookeen never planned to release any other dictionaries than french to keep development time/money low. and now that so many people outside of france buy them, bookeen can justify the cost. or they simply rushed to get the odyssey out before christmas, which worked, just not with all the features they wanted.

and who knows - maybe after the beta-test there will be more languages available. i cannot imagine a dictionary needs beta testing - but the implementation into the odyssey might need tested - on how to choose a dictionary to automatically select one for the book you are reading, show more than one dictionary at the same time. now that would be nice to have for multilingual readers like me - show the english-english descripition up top, and a quick translation english->german in the bottom. you set your primary language in the settings and done. or choose to have description OR translation (for me again always to german if available).

and what about an english book - and someone inside says some words in french. now i would be dumbfounded, and that would be for sure a word i would like to look up - but not in the english dictionary, but in the french->english one. but only once, for this word ...

[AlPe]

They will select the (monolingual) dictionary using the language tag in the EPUB metadata.

It is not clear how they will let you choose a bilingual dictionary, probably by providing you with a new menu (with a firmware update).

What you suggest (ad hoc dictionary selection, based on the word --- e.g. a French word inside an English book) seems too complicated for this device. What about a word that might appear in dozens of dictionaries, like "pizza"? You should load all those dictionaries' indexes into memory to look for the word, there is simply not enough RAM for that.

The beta testing will probably assess the linguistic engine (how do you associate "applied" to verb "apply" ? or plurals to singulars, etc.) and the quality of the dictionary. They probably will use some freeware dictionary, like dumps from wikipedia. The French dictionary which is already included in these devices comes from a freeware Stardict created from a late-1800 French dictionary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diction...çaise_(Littré)

[AlPe]

Big news on dictionaries (including an English one) coming next days... stay tuned guys

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

thanks for providing the link - i just signed up after seeing eowyns post in other thread. too bad there is no german option yet - that is my native language. but then again i now exclusively read in english.

I'm surprised they aren't providing a German dictionary, given that Bookeen primarily target the European market, and German is, I believe, the most widely-spoken language in Europe.

[Lupin]

As they are targeting European countries they have a plethora of languages to support. I think they are faced with the necessity to choose few of the biggest languages. It is a small wonder that there is no English dictionary as it would be of great help for European readers (many Europeans speak English as their second or third language) and it would be of help for markets outside of Europe too. I

I do not know if there are free dictionaries in abundance, if not, licensing costs might be reflected on the price of the reader.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by AlPe

Big news on dictionaries (including an English one) coming next days... stay tuned guys

Thanks for the heads up. Looking forward to it. Hopefully we won't have to sign a NDA and be unable to discuss the beta-test openly.

Originally Posted by AlPe

What you suggest (ad hoc dictionary selection, based on the word --- e.g. a French word inside an English book) seems too complicated for this device. What about a word that might appear in dozens of dictionaries, like "pizza"? You should load all those dictionaries' indexes into memory to look for the word, there is simply not enough RAM for that.

Was waiting a little bit for a reply 'til something bigger showed up (like your anouncement of something happening soon ). I did not mean automatic translation more like a menu option or a button when you look up in dictionary - if explanation does not make sence, hit the "translate this from" and you select the language next, and see the translation. Even though I think the device should be able to look up e.g. 5 translation dictionaries at once and simultanously show what it translates to each. You undererestimate how little work it takes to look up a word in a dictionary. Only because the e-ink appears to react slow, does not mean that the lookup of the word probably takes less time than a full refresh of the screen.

Check out how fast the french dictionary show up with a result. Unless the Odyssey cheats and already starts looking up a word while it still waits and sees if you press the word long enough ...

[AlPe]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Was waiting a little bit for a reply 'til something bigger showed up (like your anouncement of something happening soon ). I did not mean automatic translation more like a menu option or a button when you look up in dictionary - if explanation does not make sence, hit the "translate this from" and you select the language next, and see the translation. Even though I think the device should be able to look up e.g. 5 translation dictionaries at once and simultanously show what it translates to each. You undererestimate how little work it takes to look up a word in a dictionary. Only because the e-ink appears to react slow, does not mean that the lookup of the word probably takes less time than a full refresh of the screen.

I was not talking about real-time translation, I was just trying to highlight the fact that if the reader asks the dictionary for word X that appears in many dictionary with the same spelling, it might be troublesome to detect which definition should be displayed (i.e., recognizing the right dictionary to be used). An alternative might be using some language tags inside the ebook, but that's a different story and it is quite difficult to convince people who write those books to actually use your own tags... As you suggest, maybe the user could switch between different dictionaries manually.

Moreover a modern language dictionary index (600K words) has ~10 MB size with a standard record format like word (1 byte/char) + separator (1 byte) + offset (4 bytes) + size (4 bytes), where offset and size refer to the actual dictionary file. Perhaps having 5 dictionaries simultaneously loaded in RAM is doable, but certainly not many more.

[bob123]

Has anyone received their beta dictionarys?

[Lupin]

Haven't heard nothing from Bookeen yet.

[AlPe]

http://bookeen.com/blog/dictionary-beta-tests-go/

[bob123]

Originally Posted by AlPe

http://bookeen.com/blog/dictionary-beta-tests-go/

Better yet: http://176.31.234.27/dic/