Chinese Character Support on Kindle

[gato]

Alright, as long as it's working now.

[roddy]

Duokan would be overkill.

Where are you getting that Herbert Giles book from? The version I can see on Gutenberg has formatting on the Chinese to increase the size. Now I can't be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is the problem, either in itself, or because of something that happens as it's converted.

The Kindle, as you've figured out, can display Chinese just fine. However the whole process isn't particularly robust and encoding, fonts, formatting and conversion can all mess things up. Strip it right back to .txt, then if necessary convert from that to .mobi or whatever and see if it still looks right.

[animal world]

Here's the link to the book by Herbert Giles:

http://www.amazon.com/China-and-the-Chinese-ebook/dp/B004TP94L8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1332425985&sr=1-1

The Chinese characters in it reflect a font, not a JPEG, as they can increase in size along with the other text. The format is in .azw.

[panpan86]

Duokan would be overkill.

Well, not for us hardcore readers, haha ;)

[gato]

Here's the link to the book by Herbert Giles:

Can you read other Chinese documents?

[animal world]

Well, well, my kindle life is getting better and better. I did a test page of Lao She's Crescent Moon via me@free.kindle.com and, of course, this generated an azw file. It works beautifully on my kindle!!! I can't believe this. So, it begs the question why the little bit of Chinese characters in the Giles book are corrupted at times.

One thing though, my own files, such as this test page and old big files that are still in my Kindle library, no longer can be put on my kindle via usb. I need to do it via the wireless. Yet, Amazon books in my library can be transferred via usb.

Once again, my immense gratitude to everybody who helped me here.

[mokushiroku]

It's weird. All of Quinn Cash's Chinese books on Kindle display Chinese perfectly. However, other books do the 亂碼 thing and I can't read them.

[roddy]

There WILL be some encoding issue or something to blame. Give us a link to a book that doesn't work.

[roddy]

I noticed the Kindle Paperwhite (the lit screen one) claims "enhanced" support for Japanese and Chinese. Given that the screen is apparently higher resolution than earlier versions, and that they've (finally) introduced font choices for English - has anyone actually tried Chinese on one? I have a pre-order here in the UK, as we're only getting them at the end of the month.

[insighter]

I know the last post was from a while ago, but I was wondering if you Roddy (or anyone else) ever got that Paperwhite and tried Chinese on it? I've been waiting for better Chinese support a long time, and have consequently been holding off on any kind of kindle purchase.

This seems to indicate that the Kindle Paperwhite does support simplified Chinese, as does the product description on the Paperwhite product description, although I'm assuming you have to change the locale first. It also seems to suggest there's integrated dictionary lookup, anyone know whether this is C-E, or C-C? I honestly can't believe it actually would support this...I thought I'd have seem someone around using one or read a forum post about it.

After basically giving up, there finally is some encouraging news here that be a precursor to Kindle product launches in China. Would that provide some functionality (even when out of China) that would be superior to buying a U.S made Paperwhite?

My biggest thing is I want the integrated dictionary, regardless of C-E or C-C. If Kindle still doesn't have this does anyone know of an e-reader with a built in Chinese dictionary?

Thanks

[gato]

Kindle 3 already supported Chinese display, but no Chinese dictionary lookup.

[insighter]

Really, the Paperwhite product description says:

Works in Your Language

Kindle Paperwhite can be used in English, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. You can easily select the language that you are most comfortable with, and enjoy instant dictionary lookups in any of these languages.

[roddy]

Just had a play with it. You can get C>C lookups fairly easily, the 2001 新华词典 is one of the free dictionaries. It's not ideal though, I haven't spotted any example sentences, and pinyin is only given for single-character entries, not for words. The entry for 中国 also felt it necessary to point out the length of the country's history. You can get E>C lookups with the 现代英汉词典 by setting that as default dictionary for English, so presumably if you can get a decent C>E dictionary for Kindle (can you?) then you can do C>E lookups.

That all said - given the sluggishness of the Paperwhite's input and the lack of vocab capture options (I guess you could clip your lookups and then....meh), I'd still recommend having a smartphone with Pleco or alternative.

[icebear]

I have a Paperwhite that I've been using for about a month and loving. It's my first ereader and I'm devouring content on it at a rate I have not had since middle school (before all those other distractions emerged!).

Regarding Chinese - it does support Chinese without any problem, and I've managed to install the free CEDict as a C>E dictionary, which then works fine also. You should be able to find it with a Google search (maybe on this forum!) and then send it to your Kindle - it will be recognized automatically as a dictionary. As Roddy mentioned, lookups are faster on Pleco, but that can be both a blessing and curse. So long as the vocab is familiar and you are using it for reading rather than studying (and just looking up the occasional word/character) it works very well.

You can also install Duokan OS, discussed elsewhere on this forum, which has many more options for Chinese - fonts, traditional, dictionaries, online store, etc. I got it working but so far haven't played too much with it, since the default OS with the CEDict installed meets my needs.

[insighter]

Great, thanks for the info. Will probably wait till I'm back in the States to buy one, but would love to m hands on it sooner. By chance did did anyone buy there's while in the PRC?

[Angelina]

You can buy a Kindle from Taobao, not exactly legally I guess. I bought a Kindle Keyboard 3G last year from Taobao, it definitely isn't fake. Both Duokan and Kindle had been installed, I can switch between them anytime, I restart the Kindle to switch. Cost me around 1000 kuai, they delivered it in a couple of days.

The (very slow) free 3G was working and I was able to access blocked websites last year. When I went back to China this year I could only access the Amazon website, not even normal, unblocked websites.

[icebear]

I bought my Paperwhite (wifi) on Taobao for about 700rmb. It's the Japanese edition, which has the advantage of being ad-free by default. It will use whichever Amazon regional store your account is paired with (based on credit card address).

[frankwall]

I'm surprised that better support wasn't implemented for Chinese and Japanese users from the start - two massive markets for Amazon.

[insighter]

So Icebear, the Kindle Paperwhite you got was RMB 700 but the newly unveiled local one goes for RMB 849. Anyone know whether the local Chinese one has any advantages? If I got one I'd hope it would be able to handle English and Chinese smoothly.

[icebear]

Mine handles Chinese fine - including dictionary lookup. All I had to do was download the CCDICT dictionary in mobi format and email it to my kindle.com address (which then autosyncs to your Kindle). It was automatically recognized as a dictionary for Chinese characters.

The price difference most likely has to to do with Amazon.cn being more tax compliant then Taobao smugglers.