New dictionary

[don1011]

I can't find where to buy a French-English dictionary to replace the one already installed on my kindle. Can somebody help me. Amazon site doen't have any.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i replied on your thread in the french forum, but here is the info again in case anyone else is curious : mobipocket proposes several bilingual dictionaries http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...sp?Language=FR once you decide which one you want to buy, i recommend you check in some other online bookshops, you might find it cheaper there.

[wallcraft]

Simple DRM-free English dictionaries do work on the Kindle, but some DRMed dictionaries use advanced features of the MOBI format that are not supported on the Kindle (or on other Java based MOBI Readers, like the iLiad). If the dictionary works on an iLiad (say), then it may work on the Kindle. You would have to strip the DRM first obviously.

If someone gets a bilingual dictionary working on the Kindle that would be worth reporting here.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Simple DRM-free English dictionaries do work on the Kindle, but some DRMed dictionaries use advanced features of the MOBI format that are not supported on the Kindle (or on other Java based MOBI Readers, like the iLiad). If the dictionary works on an iLiad (say), then it may work on the Kindle. You would have to strip the DRM first obviously.

If someone gets a bilingual dictionary working on the Kindle that would be worth reporting here.

ah, i did not realise that the kindle didn't have full mobi dictionary support. what features does it not support ? i thought that any mobipocket dictionary would work (if you removed the drm first).

[wallcraft]

See Cross-platform feature support. According to this table "Dictionary lookup" is supported, but many indexing features and essentially all programming features are missing. There are often requests on the mobipocket forums for refunds because a dictionary did not work on a Java-based reader, but it isn't clear what percentage of dictionaries are effected and which (missing) features they are using. I used the iLiad as the Java-based reader example, but mobipocket always includes the Cybook as well. Bookeen seems to be using their own implementation, but I doubt it is more capable than other Java readers for dictionaries. So if a dictionary works on a Gen3 it is worth trying on a Kindle.

Note also that the table lists available capabilities which might not actually get implemented on a given device, the Kindle does not support multi-dictionary lookup for example (it can only have one "primary" dictionary at a time).

I also seem to remember a post about mobidedrm not working on a dictionary (but I can't find it). So the safest approach would be to find someone who is using the dictionary on iLiad or Cybook and confirm that they can remove the DRM. Then buy the dictionary and try it on the Kindle.

[HarryT]

It has been reported on MR that a commercial dictionary which worked fine on the CyBook did not work on the Kindle once its DRM had been removed. That's why I always recommend the CyBook to people for whom dictionary lookup is important.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by don1011

I can't find where to buy a French-English dictionary to replace the one already installed on my kindle. Can somebody help me. Amazon site doen't have any.

Try creating your own from the free Microsoft .lit French-to-English and English-to-French dictionaries available here.

You may need to convert this using say Calibre (or ConvertLit to extract the .html for further tweaking).

I've exploded and converted them all to my reader's .imp format, but don't think I could post them here as they are still copyrighted by Microsoft (even though they are freely available).

[sam228]

@ nrapallo
I tried what you described but I am so far unsuccessful. I used ConvertLit to extract the german-eng dictionary from Microsoft and then tried to use Calibre as well as Mobipocket creater to convert it but it only converts the Table of content. The rest of the dictionary is not being converted. Could you please be a little more specific about how you managed to do it?

[nrapallo]

I do remember editing the exploded .html to "re-use" (redefine) the dictionary tags used in the .lit ebook so as to render those tags as normal HTML tags. I used the following styles (in bold) embedded in deen.htm:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
 "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0.1 Document//EN"
 "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0.1/oebdoc101.dtd">
<html xmlns:tei-ms="http://schemas.microsoft.com/reader/ebdict">
 <head>
  <title>German-English Dictionary</title>
  <style>
        tei-ms:def		{font-style: normal}
        tei-ms:div2		{display: block; page-break-before: always}
        tei-ms:entry		{display: block; margin-bottom: 1em}
        tei-ms:sense		{display: block; text-indent: 0; margin-left: 10%; text-align:left}
        tei-ms:orth		{font-weight: bold; color:blue}
        tei-ms:lbl			{font-style: italic; color:green}
        tei-ms:pos		{font-style: italic; color:black}
        tei-ms:xr			{font-style: italic}
        div.toc			{display: block; page-break-before: right}
	span.label		{color:#00c000}
	span.num			{color:black}
	span.bold			{color:blue}
	span.pos			{color:#ff0000}
	b				{font-weight:bold; color:purple}
	i				{color: blue}
  </style>
 </head>

This then allows each definition entry within the German-English dictionary to convert with my (overriden) styles and hopefully convert better. Below is an example what the dictionary entry in the deen.htm looked like:

       <tei-ms:entry><a name="abfragen">
        <tei-ms:form>
         <tei-ms:orth>abfragen</tei-ms:orth><br />
        </tei-ms:form>
        <tei-ms:sense>
         <span class="pos">v/t</span>
         <i> Schule: </i>quiz <i>or </i>question <i>someone </i>(<b><i>über </i>
         </b>about), test <i>someone </i>orally</tei-ms:sense>
       </tei-ms:entry><br><br>

       <tei-ms:entry><a name="Abfuhr">
        <tei-ms:form>
         <tei-ms:orth>Abfuhr</tei-ms:orth><br />
        </tei-ms:form>
        <tei-ms:sense>
         <span class="pos">f</span> removal<br />
         <span class="pos">fig</span>
         <b>
          <i>jemandem eine Abfuhr erteilen </i>
         </b>rebuff (<span class="pos">colloq</span>, <i>besiegen: </i>lick) someone</tei-ms:sense>
       </tei-ms:entry><br><br>

Try those style substitutions and see if they help.

p.s. I had done this conversion, for my own personal use, in April 2007, before I joined Mobileread.com.