Arabic books work on Kindle

[cmoim]

After upgrading my kindle to 5.9.6
My kindle could finally read Arabic books . No Arabic font required it comes with book.
Books in .mobi format don't work , they aren't detected.
As far as i know only .azw3 works but normally in that format it is possible to change the boldness but in the Arabic font it isn't possible.
The dictionary is working, you won't need to download it on your own.
There is a slight issue , depending on the book the turn page time differ , it is quite slow , from 2 seconds to 8 s.

Feel free to contact me if you'd like to know where to find Arabic eBooks.

[jhowell]

Amazon announced support for Arabic language books on e-ink Kindles in the What's New release notes for 5.9.6 and then later removed it. The latest version (5.9.6.1) supports Arabic language books purchased from Amazon, such as this one:

‫هاري بوتر وحجر الفيلسوف: 1 (Harry Potter)‬ (Arabic Edition) Kindle Edition

Arabic language books sold by Amazon are delived in KFX format and do not seem to have any noticeable page turn lag.

[tomsem]

There are 2 font choices for Arabic. I assume any font family that supports Arabic can be used as a custom font.

Arabic and Arabic-English translation dictionaries download when you download an Arabic language book from Amazon. And Translate feature supports Arabic as well (when selecting a phrase or paragraph).

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

There are 2 font choices for Arabic. I assume any font family that supports Arabic can be used as a custom font.

Arabic and Arabic-English translation dictionaries download when you download an Arabic language book from Amazon. And Translate feature supports Arabic as well (when selecting a phrase or paragraph).

Also check in the cloud. There is the Oxford English to Arabic dictionary as a default Kindle dictionary. Needs to be downloaded manually.

[cmoim]

While i didn't buy any Arabic kindle book , the Arabic dictionary was downloaded automatically.
It seems Arabic is offering 12000 Arabic kindle books now .https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=77351...ref=KIE_AR_prl

[jhowell]

Amazon put out a press release about this today.

Amazon announced today that Kindle customers around the globe can now enjoy reading from a growing selection of more than 12,000 Arabic language Kindle books on Kindle devices and the free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets and Fire Tablets. Starting today, readers will find a large digital selection of popular Arabic language titles in the Kindle Store including books from leading authors like Naguib Mahfouz, and Nizar Qabani, best-sellers like Al Aswad Yaliko Biki and Harbo Alkalbi Athania (winner of the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction), classics like Ibn Khaldoun’s Muqadimah, Al-Mutanabbi’s anthology, and Kalila wa Dimna as well as translated English language bestsellers like How to Win Friends and Influence People, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, A Tale of Two Cities and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Customers can shop for Arabic language Kindle books on existing Amazon websites including www.amazon.com/KindleArabic, www.amazon.co.uk/KindleArabic, and www.amazon.de/arabischeEbooks.

Interestingly, Arabic is not supported by Kindle for PC/Mac.

[PoP]

Originally Posted by tomsem

...
Arabic and Arabic-English translation dictionaries download when you download an Arabic language book from Amazon. And Translate feature supports Arabic as well (when selecting a phrase or paragraph).

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Also check in the cloud. There is the Oxford English to Arabic dictionary as a default Kindle dictionary.
...

Originally Posted by jhowell

Amazon put out a press release about this today.

Interestingly, Arabic is not supported by Kindle for PC/Mac.

On Android these dictionaries download as KFX files. Since I have not updated my Kindle firmware (to avoid losing AZW2 support), can someone verify if these dictionaries (not the ebooks) also download as KFX rather than MOBI/KF7.

If so, have additional features and publishing guidelines for dictionaries in this new format been issued?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by PoP

On Android these dictionaries download as KFX files. Since I have not updated my Kindle firmware (to avoid losing AZW2 support), can someone verify if these dictionaries (not the ebooks) also download as KFX rather than MOBI/KF7.

The Arabic and Indic language dictionaries that download automatically are in KFX format in all of the cases I have checked: iOS, Android, Fire, and Kindle.

(Kindle for PC/Mac does not support Arabic at all so far. It supports Indic languages but not dictionaries for them.)

From my examination of these dictionaries they are in the KDF (SQLite database) variant of KFX format with DRM applied. Newer Kindle apps and firmware come with inflection handling hard coded specifically for Arabic and Indic languages, rather than using rules for handling inflections as part of the dictionary.

Originally Posted by PoP

If so, have additional features and publishing guidelines for dictionaries in this new format been issued?

Kfxgen, which is built into Kindle Previewer 3, treats dictionaries in most languages as regular books. However if an attempt is made to process an Arabic or Indic language dictionary it fails with the error:

Error:E00903: "YJ Dictionary conversion not supported for BYOD Dictionary."

(YJ is a reference to Yellow Jersey, the Amazon code name for KFX. I assume BYOD refers to a non-Amazon produced dictionary.)

I have no idea whether or not a MOBI format dictionary would work for these languages. Someone else will have to test that.

[PoP]

^

Excellent report. Thanks.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I have no idea whether or not a MOBI format dictionary would work for these languages. Someone else will have to test that.

It's possible to compile Arabic-English MOBI dictionaries (e.g. [1], [2]), if the definitions don't contain Arabic word sequences, because Arabic word sequences will be displayed LTR.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

It's possible to compile Arabic-English MOBI dictionaries (e.g. [1], [2]), if the definitions don't contain Arabic word sequences, because Arabic word sequences will be displayed LTR.

Your first link has a note at the end:

Due to the large number of possible conjugations of Arabic words, including short vowels and diacritics, it is not possible to include every single conjugation in the dictionary, as the dictionary lookup times quickly become unacceptably long.

If wonder if this issue is one of the reasons why Amazon came up with a new format for Arabic language dictionaries.

[tomsem]

Arabic script is used for a number of linguistically distinct languages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_script

And there are several Arabic dialects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic

But I suppose the dictionary is inclusive of those.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by jhowell

If wonder if this issue is one of the reasons why Amazon came up with a new format for Arabic language dictionaries.

Probably correct. The older dictionaries allow download and transfer over USB. The Arabic ones do not have the download option -- they have to be downloaded from the device or delivered to the device.