dictionaries without connecting to Amazon

[h3ct0r]

Hi all, considering a kindle however I'm seeking clarification on how the dictionaries work. I have no intention of ever connecting it to amazon for any reason whatsoever and the device will be permanently on airplane mode.

As a result I'm unaware if the dictionaries come preloaded or you have to download (or buy?) them from amazon or elsewhere? For reference I require Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese monolingual dictionaries.

If I have to register anything or connect to anything in order to get these dictionaries then I will pass on the kindle. Appreciate any clarification or feedback thanks a lot

[JSWolf]

Yes you have to register and you have to download with the Kindle.

[h3ct0r]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes you have to register and you have to download with the Kindle.

That's disappointing. Are they free? Could I theoretically download them on someone else's registered device and then copy the file and sideload them onto my device?

If anyone known any way to bypass or circumvent registering the device to install/download/access the dictionaries. Thank you

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by h3ct0r

That's disappointing. Are they free? Could I theoretically download them on someone else's registered device and then copy the file and sideload them onto my device?

If anyone known any way to bypass or circumvent registering the device to install/download/access the dictionaries. Thank you

The ones you download with your Kindle are free. But as to getting a dictionary off of another Kindle onto yours, I don't know if that can be done. You could try it and see if it works.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by h3ct0r

As a result I'm unaware if the dictionaries come preloaded or you have to download (or buy?) them from amazon or elsewhere? For reference I require Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese monolingual dictionaries.

Amazon offers no free Latin dictionaries and commercial Latin dictionaries might not work as pop-up dictionaries.

For the other languages you used to be able to download the following monolingual dictionaries for free after registration:

• lo Zingarelli - Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana
• Real Academia Española - el Diccionario de la lengua española
• Priberam - Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa

However, I don't know if Amazon still offers them for free for new Kindle owners.
You might want to ask Amazon customer service about it.

BTW, you can't copy these dictionaries from other Kindles or Kindle apps, because they're DRM-protected.

[h3ct0r]

Thanks JSWolf and Doitsu

Sounds like its not enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a device which only does 1 thing and is already overpriced, bezos wants your soul and your data along with it.

Does anyone know of a method to convert kobo dictionaries to kindle format?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by h3ct0r

Does anyone know of a method to convert kobo dictionaries to kindle format?

I don't, but the best place to ask about kindle dictionaries is in the Dictionary FAQ sticky thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=131137

[shamanNS]

Kobo (retail) dictionaries are encrypted.

[JSWolf]

The only solution I can think of is to turn on WiFi, register the Kindle, download whichever dictionaries you want and then turn on airplane mode. And if you don;t want to accidentally connect to WiFi, setup a guest account on your router and then you can turn that off when you are done.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

Kobo (retail) dictionaries are encrypted.

But you can easily add a Pyglossary converted Stardict dictionary to a Kobo. When I tried the conversion to mobi format, the Kindle owner did not manage to get it to work as a popup dictionary. Not sure if it was a dictionary issue or a user issue.

[shamanNS]

@DNSB The question asked was about converting from Kobo's dictionary format into a Kindle dictionary (so special variant of mobi format).
Tools for converting plain, unencrypted Kobo dictionaries do exist and are publicly available. Tool for first removing the encryption from say Kobo's version of Oxford English dictionary are not publicly available, at least not to my knowledge & last time I looked for that.

[DNSB]

Perhaps you could explain how you went from the dictionaries that are not retail such as the ones downloadable by Kobo ereaders to encrypted retail (selling goods to the public, usually in small amounts for their own use) dictionaries. Perhaps include a link on the Kobo store to the Oxford English Dictionary 2024 edition for instance?

And as I mentioned, the one person for whom I converted a Stardict dictionary into mobi format was unable to get the dictionary to work either by placing it in documents/dictionaries on their Kindle or by using Send to Kindle. This is likely an issue with Pyglossary and the process used to create the mobi dictionary though a test dictionary did work either way. The same dictionary converted to dicthtml-en-ru.zip worked on a Kobo placed in the custom-dict directory.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And as I mentioned, the one person for whom I converted a Stardict dictionary into mobi format was unable to get the dictionary to work either by placing it in documents/dictionaries on their Kindle or by using Send to Kindle. This is likely an issue with Pyglossary [...]

KindleGen supports only a very limited number of source and target languages for dictionaries. When I last checked this only the following language codes were supported:

Spoiler:

af Afrikaans
sq Albanian
ar Arabic
ar-dz Arabic (Algeria)
ar-bh Arabic (Bahrain)
ar-eg Arabic (Egypt)
ar-eg Arabic (Iraq)
ar-jo Arabic (Jordan)
ar-kw Arabic (Kuwait)
ar-lb Arabic (Lebanon)
ar-lb Arabic (Libya)
ar-ma Arabic (Morocco)
ar-om Arabic (Oman)
ar-qa Arabic (Qatar)
ar-sa Arabic (Saudi Arabia)
ar-sy Arabic (Syria)
ar-tn Arabic (Tunisia)
ar-ae Arabic (U.A.E.)
ar-ye Arabic (Yemen)
hy Armenian
az Azeri (Cyrillic)
az Azeri (Latin)
eu Basque
be Belorussian
bn Bengali
bg Bulgarian
ca Catalan
zh Chinese
zh-hk Chinese (Hong Kong)
zh-cn Chinese (PRC)
zh-sg Chinese (Singapore)
zh-tw Chinese (Taiwan)
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
nl Dutch
nl-be Dutch (Belgium)
en English
en-au English (Australia)
en-bz English (Belize)
en-ca English (Canada)
en-ie English (Ireland)
en-jm English (Jamaica)
en-nz English (New Zealand)
en-ph English (Philippines)
en-za English (South Africa)
en-tt English (Trinidad)
en-gb English (United Kingdom)
en-us English (United States)
en-zw English (Zimbabwe)
et Estonian
fo Faeroese
fa Farsi
fi Finnish
fr-be French (Belgium)
fr-ca French (Canada)
fr French
fr-lu French (Luxembourg)
fr-mc French (Monaco)
fr-ch French (Switzerland)
ka Georgian
de German
de-at German (Austria)
de-li German (Liechtenstein)
de-lu German (Luxembourg)
de-ch German (Switzerland)
el Greek
gu Gujarati
he Hebrew
hi Hindi
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
id Indonesian
it Italian
it-ch Italian (Switzerland)
ja Japanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
x-kok Konkani
ko Korean
lv Latvian
lt Lithuanian
mk Macedonian
ms Malay (Brunei Darussalam)
ms Malay (Malaysia)
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mr Marathi
ne Nepali
no Norwegian (Bokmal)
no Norwegian (Nynorsk)
or Oriya
pl Polish
pt Portuguese
pt-br Portuguese (Brazil)
pa Punjabi
rm Rhaeto-Romanic
ro Romanian
ro-mo Romanian (Moldova)
ru Russian
ru-mo Russian (Moldova)
sz Sami (Lappish)
sa Sanskrit
sr Serbian (Cyrillic)
sr Serbian (Latin)
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
sb Sorbian
es Spanish
es-ar Spanish (Argentina)
es-bo Spanish (Bolivia)
es-cl Spanish (Chile)
es-co Spanish (Colombia)
es-cr Spanish (Costa Rica)
es-do Spanish (Dominican Republic)
es-ec Spanish (Ecuador)
es-sv Spanish (El Salvador)
es-gt Spanish (Guatemala)
es-hn Spanish (Honduras)
es-mx Spanish (Mexico)
es-ni Spanish (Nicaragua)
es-pa Spanish (Panama)
es-py Spanish (Paraguay)
es-pe Spanish (Peru)
es-pr Spanish (Puerto Rico)
es-uy Spanish (Uruguay)
es-ve Spanish (Venezuela)
sx Sutu
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
sv-fi Swedish (Finland)
ta Tamil
tt Tatar
te Telugu
th Thai
ts Tsonga
tn Tswana
tr Turkish
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek (Cyrillic)
uz Uzbek (Latin)
vi Vietnamese
xh Xhosa
zu Zulu

If the language code is not supported you'll have to select one of the supported language codes for the input language and also change the language code of the books that you want to use the DIY dictionary with to that arbitrary input language code.

IIRC, in dictionaries generated by older PyGlossary versions the following custom opf section was sometimes missing or incorrectly formatted:

<x-metadata>
	<output encoding="utf-8"/>
	<DefaultLookupIndex>default</DefaultLookupIndex>
	<DictionaryInLanguage>XX</DictionaryInLanguage>
	<DictionaryOutLanguage>YY</DictionaryOutLanguage>
</x-metadata>

PyGlossary also won't check if the source and target languages are actually supported by KindleGen. This means that you can end up with a non working dictionary, even if the source files were correctly formatted.

IIRC, there were also some language specific issues, e.g. there were some problems with DIY Korean dictionaries.

[h3ct0r]

I'll take a look at pyglossary, I'm not referring to retail dictionaries just the standard ones that are supported by the device (I already have them downloaded), I have some non retail 3rd party kobo dictionaries as well.

Problem is I don't currently own a kindle device to test anything on, my prospective ownership of said device is contingent upon using the device offline and having complete operational dictionaries without signing up or registering to anything.

[Martyd]

I'm thinking Kindle is not for you.