Reading Chinese/Japanese on the Kindle, Part III
Posted on November 29, 2009 at 1:14 am by kyliu
Tags: chinese, ebooks, hardware, japanese, kindle2, unicode
Filed Under geek | 10 Comments |
[Updated 12/9/09: Added some suggestions on how to make your Kindle display both English and Chinese content with the best fonts.]
This is a follow up to my previous posts on reading Asian text on Amazon’s Kindle (part1, part2).
With the 2.3 firmware update, the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX now has the ability to read PDFs natively. If you convert your Asian text documents to PDF, you’ll be able to read them on the Kindle just fine.
As the screenshot suggests, due to the small size of the Kindle screen, it would be best if you choose a larger font during the PDF conversion process for readability.
This obviates the needs to install the Unicode Fonts Hack, but if you wish to retain the ability to clip text and to highlight and bookmark, you’ll still need the hack.
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10 Responses to “Reading Chinese/Japanese on the Kindle, Part III”
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Kyliu, is it possible to download an english-chinese dictionary for use in reading chinese text?
Yes, it is. Essentially, you just have to download/create a dictionary in .mobi format on the Kindle. You will have to install the Unicode Fonts Hack though, and the dictionary can’t be used on PDFs.
The smart people over at the Hi-PDA forums did most of the hard work of paving the way. For details, see this thread, and this thread.
Do they sell the kindle in Taiwan or China? Don’t they have Chinese Kindles out there?
My friend’s dad just got one from Korea that reads Korean and can type in Korean. I really want to get this for my mom, but I want her to be able to read Chinese books.
There are many e-book readers being sold in the Far East. Hanlin, for example, is pretty popular. The Kindle from Amazon, however, does not currently support non-Latin scripts, either in display or input.
Unless your mom is technically comfortable with things like file conversion and flashing firmware, I do not recommend the Kindle as a gift. To modify the Kindle to support display of Chinese is not a trivial matter for the non-technically inclined. And while PDFs do offer a simple way to support some Chinese books without modifying the Kindle, formatting them for optimal display on the Kindle again requires some technical savvy.
what program do you use to convert your asian txt files to pdf? and do I have to buy it?
If you are on a Mac, then simply Print->PDF->Save as PDF… will do the job. On Windows there are a variety of free PDF converters (do a Google search for “free PDF converter”).
Thanks for all the help, but I still have a problem after I have converted the file, and try to read it on the kindle the text is way to small, how do I change the size? thank you
ps I have tried changing the font size before converting the file but no luck
Are you on a Mac or PC? If you set the font size in the document to 18 point or so and then convert to PDF, does the text come out okay? If you can’t make it work on your machine, try using the PDF export from Google Docs (after setting the font to a large size).
I found a new converter, and it works now thanks for the help