l4u / jmdict-kindle

Japanese-English dictionary for Kindle based on the JMdict database

About

This is a Japanese-English dictionary based on the JMdict database for Kindle Paperwhite devices and Kindle Android app.

Features:

• lookup of inflected verbs.

Download

You can download the latest version of the dictionary from here.

Install

Kindle Paperwhite

To install the dictionary into your device follow these steps:

• for 1st-generation Kindle Paperwhite devices, ensure you have firmware version 5.3.9 or higher as it includes improved homonym lookup for Japanese;

• connect your Kindle device via USB;

• copy the jmdict.mobi to the documents sub-folder;

• eject the USB device;

• on your device go to Home > Settings > Device Options > Language and Dictionaries > Dictionaries and set JMdict Japanese-English Dictionary as the default dictionary for Japanese.

Kindle Android App

• rename jmdict.mobi as B005FNK020_EBOK.prc

• connect your Android device via USB

• copy B005FNK020_EBOK.prc into Internal Storage/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files/ or /sdcard/android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files

This will override the default Japanese-Japanese dictionary.

Building from source

Requirements:

• Unix (tested with Linux but might work on MacOS or Cygwin with little or no changes)

• Python version 2.7

  • Pycairo Python

  • Python Image Library

• kindlegen (tested with version 2.9)

Build with:

make

To do

• Leverage more of the JMdict data:

  • cross references

• Add examples from Tanaka Corpus or Tatoeba project.

• Include a subset of Japanese proper names from ENAMDICT/JMnedict.

Credits

• Jim Breen and the JMdict/EDICT project

• John Mettraux for his EDICT2 Japanese-English Kindle dictionary

• Choplair-network for their Nihongo conjugator

• Paul Durrant's kindlestrip

Alternatives

• John Mettraux's EDICT2 Japanese-English Kindle dictionary

• Amazon Kindle Store

  • Roger Häusermann's