Comments on: Reading Chinese/Japanese on the Kindle, Part III

By: cheridum

cheridum — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:19:34 +0000

I found a new converter, and it works now thanks for the help

By: kyliu

kyliu — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:41:44 +0000

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).

By: cheridum

cheridum — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:24:35 +0000

ps I have tried changing the font size before converting the file but no luck

By: cheridum

cheridum — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:12:27 +0000

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

By: kyliu

kyliu — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:22:47 +0000

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”).

By: cheridum

cheridum — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:18:16 +0000

what program do you use to convert your asian txt files to pdf? and do I have to buy it?

By: kyliu

kyliu — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:33:43 +0000

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.

By: elizabeth

elizabeth — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:34:59 +0000

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.

By: kyliu

kyliu — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:07:26 +0000

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.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:32:11 +0000

Kyliu, is it possible to download an english-chinese dictionary for use in reading chinese text?