Dictionary woes

[omk3]

The kindle 4 (non touch) comes with a few very good dictionaries that work more or less flawlessly. But of course not all languages are covered.

After several hours of trial and error I managed to convert a greek dictionary for the kindle. I was very happy it worked, until it dawned on me that there were no inflections. This renders the dictionary almost useless, as very few words are actually in their dictionary form when you encounter them in a book. In my pocketbook that has never been a problem, as I was taken to the closest match in the dictionary and could take it from there, or I could use the keyboard to search for the word myself. But that isn't so on the kindle.

If the word is not found as is in the dictionary, I see no way to even access the dictionary at all, not to mention get to the closest match. If I exit my book and open the dictionary by itself, which is impractical, I could theoretically type the word and search, but as far as I can see there is no way to type greek characters.

Does anyone know of any solution to the above problem? The easiest would be to buy a good commercial greek dictionary for the kindle, but there is no such thing nor do I foresee it in the near future.

Things that could help me:
- A relatively easy way to add inflections to my dictionary
- A way to open the dictionary from within the book to the closest match of the word I want to look up
- A way to type non-latin characters

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Denko]

I'll keep my eye on this thread. interrested aswell.

[evwool]

Originally Posted by omk3

- A way to open the dictionary from within the book to the closest match of the word I want to look up
.

Not sure if the K4 works the same as the K3 but if you type start of the word you want as if you were typing in a Search or an annotation, after pressing the Down key on the 5-Way controller, press the Right key until you get to Dictionary

[Papi]

As Evwool said : you can start highlighting a word, don't click to end highlighting instead open the keyboard, and your word is pasted in the text box. If you can retrieve the basic form of the word by just deleting characters from the original word, you can do it there, and from there you can search the edited word on the dictionary.

[omk3]

Originally Posted by Papi

As Evwool said : you can start highlighting a word, don't click to end highlighting instead open the keyboard, and your word is pasted in the text box. If you can retrieve the basic form of the word by just deleting characters from the original word, you can do it there, and from there you can search the edited word on the dictionary.

I was excited about this even though it needs far more clicks than I'd like. But then I came across what I suppose to be a bug: The dictionary used in this method is the Oxford English Dictionary (the default for the english language), even though the language of the book is correctly set to greek and the greek dictionary is correctly opened in the few cases that it can find the words I want to look up in the straightforward way.

[Papi]

Originally Posted by omk3

I was excited about this even though it needs far more clicks than I'd like. But then I came across what I suppose to be a bug: The dictionary used in this method is the Oxford English Dictionary (the default for the english language), even though the language of the book is correctly set to greek and the greek dictionary is correctly opened in the few cases that it can find the words I want to look up in the straightforward way.

Yes unfortunately I emailed Amazon about this and they don't consider this as a bug, although it seems to me more logical to open the dictionary associated with the book you're currently reading. I think it opens the default dictionary set for the language which is the language set for the device. For example, my Kindle NT language is French, and when I search for a word when reading a book, whatever language that is written in, it will open the default dictionary I declared for French. So I guess the language of your Kindle is English, and the OED is the default dictionary for English books. Now I don't know how it behaves when there's no default dictionary set for the language of the device. Say you set your Kindle to German, but don't have any German dictionary, what happens then ? Maybe it will open the correct dictionary.

[omk3]

Originally Posted by Papi

Say you set your Kindle to German, but don't have any German dictionary, what happens then ? Maybe it will open the correct dictionary.

I tried it with spanish, and got the message that I don't have a spanish dictionary installed... It beats me why they would consider it a feature instead of a bug.

Changing the subject slightly, choosing the dictionary dynamically from within the book would be a major feature for me. There are a lot of books written in one language that contain words or phrases in another. Latin and french words especially feature as guest stars in a lot of books. The way the kindle is set up now there is no way to look up words in a language different to that of the book or the device. Which is a shame because the dictionary does work fabulously when it works...

[Papi]

Originally Posted by omk3

I tried it with spanish, and got the message that I don't have a spanish dictionary installed...

too bad

Changing the subject slightly, choosing the dictionary dynamically from within the book would be a major feature for me.

The Sony PRS / T1 do that. Unfortunately you can't add dictionaries to them, that's why I went for the Kindle.

[Papi]

I just checked on my Kindle Keyboard, and it doesn't have the new "feature" of the Kindle NT : the dictionary used when reading a book is the same whether it's a word from the book, or a word you typed yourself.

[Doitsu]

AFAIK, you can use lookup dictionaries only with Latin languages. For example, Russian or Arabic dictionaries won't work.
A workaround is the use of transliterated headwords. That's what Russian Kindle users did, when they created their Russian-English dictionary.
As for the inflections, they need to be explicitly defined by the dictionary author, because they cannot be automatically generated by kindlegen.
I.e. you'd need to find a Greek inflection list and add the entries to the source file.
Unlike Mobipocket Reader, the Kindle doesn't support fuzzy searches. I.e. don't expect it to suggest a similar dictionary entry if it doesn't find the exact word.
As for changing the keyboard layout, there's a Kindle hack for it, but I haven't tested it myself.

[omk3]

Originally Posted by Papi

The Sony PRS / T1 do that. Unfortunately you can't add dictionaries to them, that's why I went for the Kindle.

In my experience pocketbook is best at handling dictionaries. You can add your own, choose dynamically from within the book, browse similar entries etc. I'm not very sure about the availability of good commercial dictionaries for the pocketbook, but it's relatively easy to find or convert dictionaries on your own.

Originally Posted by Papi

I just checked on my Kindle Keyboard, and it doesn't have the new "feature" of the Kindle NT : the dictionary used when reading a book is the same whether it's a word from the book, or a word you typed yourself.

Interesting... It still sounds very much like a bug to me.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

AFAIK, you can use lookup dictionaries only with Latin languages. For example, Russian or Arabic dictionaries won't work.
A workaround is the use of transliterated headwords. That's what Russian Kindle users did, when they created their Russian-English dictionary.

That's strange, my greek dictionary works fine - at least in the few cases it can actually find the words I look up. Of course I can't type greek to directly search in it, so transliterated headworks would probably make sense for searching, but not to use as a default look-up dictionary surely.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

As for the inflections, they need to be explicitly defined by the dictionary author, because they cannot be automatically generated by kindlegen.
I.e. you'd need to find a Greek inflection list and add the entries to the source file.

I had come across this link but I'm not sure I understand what it says. Should I add all possible inflections to all words? That is surely too much work.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Unlike Mobipocket Reader, the Kindle doesn't support fuzzy searches. I.e. don't expect it to suggest a similar dictionary entry if it doesn't find the exact word.

Too bad. I wrote to Amazon about it (and the other stuff I mention in this thread), but even though I got a polite reply I don't expect much to come out of it.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

As for changing the keyboard layout, there's a Kindle hack for it, but I haven't tested it myself.

This was designed for kindle keyboard and I'm not sure it would work for my kindle 4. I'll look into it further, though.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by omk3

I had come across this link but I'm not sure I understand what it says. Should I add all possible inflections to all words?

Yes, that's what dictionary publishers do.

Originally Posted by omk3

That is surely too much work.

Not if you use a script. I created a very simple VB script that will add inflections to an existing .html file from a tab delimited inflection list file.
I.e., it parses each definition between <idx:orth>...</idx:orth> and then tries to find a matching entry in the inflections list. The tough part is finding a free and comprehensive inflection list. (I found a nice Spanish one as part of an Open Source part-of-speech tagger.) If you find one and cannot figure out how to add inflections, I might be able to help you.
Ideally, both dictionary data and inflections should be Open Source/GPL2 so that the resulting dictionary can be posted on MR.

BTW, Dukoan Lite has built-in StarDict support.

[NicholasV]

Figures. Personally the reason why I wanted to get into e-books was because when I buy Greek books and ship them to the USA, usually the shipping alone is the same or more than the cost of the books themselves, which means they are quite expensive. Since I don't know Greek fluently enough I also look forward to a dictionary, especially a Greek-English one, but I cannot seem to find any. I am sure eventually the Greek publishing industry will eventually catch up years down the road to the maturity of other e-books markets today, and offer dictionaries in different formats, but lag to newer since then developments.

What dictionary did you convert?

[atlek]

Hi,I also need to add inflictions to a dictionary I am making. Would it be possible to have a look at the script you have used?

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by atlek

Hi,I also need to add inflictions to a dictionary I am making. Would it be possible to have a look at the script you have used?

I customized the script so that it only works with my input files and probably would be of little use to you.
Have you already created a working dictionary source file? If so for what language?