Instant word lookup on Kindle - dictionary

[i__forget]

Hello , I downloaded a free sample of a book on my Kindle.Characters display fine, can zoom the font fine, but when I tap on a character, it selects randomly 4-5 characters were I tapped. Then It can't translate them in the dictionary. Is this a known limitation that it can't detect the word boundaries? There's no instant translation for Chinese on Kindle? 
Thanks

[gato]

Which version of Kindle do you have?  Have you downloaded one of the Chinese dictionaries?  

[i__forget]

I have the paper white

 .  I didn't download any dictionary! I thought it was built it.

[gato]

The Chinese dictionary is only built-in if you bought your Kindle in China.

[i__forget]

Thanks i'll try installing it when i go home

[Luxi]

47 minutes ago, gato said:

The Chinese dictionary is only built-in if you bought your Kindle in China.

 

Dictionaries for all supported language are available in the Kindle no matter where you bought the device. They are not downloaded into the Kindle by default, but become active (sort of fall down from The Cloud) when one opens a book or document in that language. In theory it is possible to install additional dictionaries but I'm not sure what format they must be or where to find them or whether that possibility is still open. Anyway, Amazon's dictionary is adequate. The software should pick what dictionary to open, but if for some reason it hasn't, you'll see a link to something like 'Dictionary Selection' leading to the list of available dictionaries where you can choose the one you need - although the new updates seem to just pick what one needs without problems.

 

 

10 hours ago, i__forget said:

when I tap on a character, it selects randomly 4-5 characters were I tapped.

 

What size font do you have on the screen? The screen response isn't 100% accurate in the best of cases, but if the fonts are too small for your finger, it's impossible to pinpoint a single character or 2, and you take too much time trying. If I'm going to need the dictionary a lot, I use a large font, you need to experiment a bit to find out what works best for you. You may also try using a stylo. 

 

10 hours ago, i__forget said:

Then It can't translate them in the dictionary

 

Looks to me like your problem is outdated Kindle software. There have been a couple of big updates in the  last few months and one of the improvements has been a much better dictionary and language handling. Check in your Kindle Settings, if your software is just a few months out of date there will still be an 'Update your Kindle' option in Device Settings. If that option is grayed out it means your Kindle is up-to-date, but it may have a problem. I suggest you download the software and install manually again to see if that makes things better - you'll find the file to download and instructions in Amazon.com or co.uk, 

If your software is A LOT out of date, you will definitely have to download and install the software manually. It is very easy and all the instructions you need are in the Amazon Kindle Support pages.  I strongly suggest you download and install using Amazon.com or co.uk, otherwise your Kindle will have Chinese as default and you won't know where to start.

 

10 hours ago, i__forget said:

Is this a known limitation that it can't detect the word boundaries? There's no instant translation for Chinese on Kindle? 

 

Not  so limited after the latest improvements. The new dictionary is quite good at picking grammatical expressions/chengyu and common 4-character-strings. When you tap, you should see your selection marked by a couple of white tabs (that you can move to expand or narrow down the selection) and a large dictionary box should pop-up automatically with the definitions. On the right of that box there are 2 more boxes: one for Wikipedia (which will be Chinese if you're reading Chinese texts - not sure how that works in China if you don't get access to Wikipedia).

The third box is a translation box. It uses Bing and is sort-of-OK-ish, but don't trust it too much. 

If those 3 boxes don't pop-up and instead you see a horizontal band with 'Highlight' etc., tap the 3 dots on the right and that should open a pop-up with links to Wikipedia and Dictionary. That dictionary link seems to give a fuller dictionary page compared to the normal pop-up, worth bearing in mind.

 

11 hours ago, i__forget said:

I downloaded a free sample of a book on my Kindle.

 

Did you know you can also upload pdfs, docs and text files in the Kindle? pdfs used to be a pain in the Kindle, but they've improved now. You get the same language/dictionary/translation options as for any kindle-book from Amazon. Worth trying --- especially if outside China and without access to Amazon's Chinese kindle store.

 

 

[i__forget]

41 minutes ago, Luxi said:

What size font do you have on the screen? The screen response isn't 100% accurate in the best of cases, but if the fonts are too small for your finger, it's impossible to pinpoint a single character or 2, and you take too much time trying. If I'm going to need the dictionary a lot, I use a large font, you need to experiment a bit to find out what works best for you. You may also try using a stylo. 

I am using a huge font as I'm still working on my character recognition so this is not the problem. I'll do everything you told me and report back.

[i__forget]

I have downloaded 1 sample and a full book , both simplified chinese, because I read the dictionary is automatically downloaded when you download a book in the target language. However this was not the case, when I got to  Settings -> Language & Dictionarries -> Dictionaries , the Chinese one is not there .

[Luxi]

I still think your Kindle software may need updating. However, different countries have different Kindle options and settings in Amazon, where is yours registered? I never had to download any dictionaries in any Kindle Paperwhite, even the earliest model was already setup. China seems to have dictionary functions similar to those in mine, have you searched their Kindle Help pages?

You'll have to contact the Amazon branch where your Kindle is registered for help specific to your device. 

[uvwxyz]

Do not worry about your Kindle, this is the fault of the book's formatting. Some (most) books are ok, but a few like Chinese Breeze and surprisingly (at least the samples I tried of) Mandarin Companion mangle all selections badly, rendering the embedded dictionary useless.