Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 March 2013

Babylon-based dictionaries on Kindle - Round 2

My post "Using Babylon-based dictionaries on your Kindle" seems to have gotten relatively wide attention. Currently the statistics show that 2595 users have seen it, 31 of them commented, 2 more via Facebook and a number of emails I've received from readers.
People's interest in pre-built dictionaries which they can run on their Kindle devices (specifically English-Hebrew dictionaries, but not just) is understandable. There are some issues with the BabylonToHtml conversion tool I've put together.

Due to lack of time for resolving the known issues with the project, or for production of pre-built dictionaries, I've decided to share BabylonToHtml publicly as an open-source project, for anyone who wishes to update/improve it.

Pre-Built Dictionaries in this post!

I'm sharing some pre-built dictionaries in this post. Some were produced by me and some by others. They are shared here so that they can be freely downloaded and used by anyone.
This section will be updated with dictionaries which the readers share with me over time.
 Jump to the pre-built dictionaries section!

Friday, 29 June 2012

Using Babylon-based dictionaries on your Kindle

UPDATE! A Follow-Up Post on this Project
Since this post got wide attention, I've decided to follow-up on this project.
See my new Babylon-based dictionaries on Kindle - Round 2 post.
Now the project is shared as open-source and pre-built dictionaries are organized and shared.

Lost in translation
The problem
Addressing this issue started by by trying to purchase an Italian-English dictionary for my 2nd generation Kindle, running Kindle software v2.5.3.
One dictionary was offered for sale  (as an ebook) on Amazon's website. The problem was that the dictionary was not actually available for the device for another whole year..

Good translations
Babylon, on the other hand, offers high-quality dictionaries, spanning over pretty much every language. Babylon Translator is a paid software for Windows. Its dictionary files (.BGL) are offered as free downloads.

In a perfect universe
If I only had a way to import Babylon's free content dictionary into my Kindle and use it as the built-in dictionary, it would have been perfect..

The solution presented here was tested on my Kindle 2. I'm pretty sure it should work on newer versions of Kindle as well.
The same Babylon dictionary, used on my PC (Left) and on my Kindle (Right)
(Click for full size)
Article Level:
Reasonably moderate