I’ve gotten into reading Japanese books a lot more recently, and I prefer e-books as their built-in dictionaries are a god-send for foreign language learners.

I’ve only used Google Play so far. The integrated dictionary is fine, but one annoyance is that it can’t detect any word that uses furigana. Are Kindle, Kobo, or any other platforms any better?

  • @DigitalAudioM
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    11 months ago

    Kindle has a great integrated dictionary, and as long as it has an internet connection it also has integrated wikipedia and translation searches. I’ve found translations to be serviceable enough for regular vocabulary and sentences.

    Honestly, I think the kindle has been one of my best purchases yet.

    • @Umechan@reddthat.comOP
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      211 months ago

      Can the dictionary recognize words that use furigana? That’s my main concern as I don’t use machine translation.

      • @DigitalAudioM
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        211 months ago

        It definitely can recognize them without any problems. In fact, I don’t think I’ve encountered any examples of unrecognizable types of items.

        Granted, I don’t encounter a lot of text with furigana in the wild, but I don’t remember ever having any issues.

        • @Umechan@reddthat.comOP
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          211 months ago

          Thanks. How about conjugated verbs and adjectives? Google play’s dictionary only recognizes then if they’re in dictionary form.

          • @DigitalAudioM
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            111 months ago

            I’ve never noticed it struggling with those either. Obviously, it’s not like I’m paying a lot of attention all the time. I use my Kindle for reading for fun, and occasionally look up one or two words I don’t know, but I’ve never noticed it struggling with conjugated verbs, because it usually just detects the verb’s stem and looks that up. It’s a pretty good detection algorithm in my experience.

      • @bobob@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Do you have an example of a book that makes problems? I can try it on my e-book readers

        • @Umechan@reddthat.comOP
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          111 months ago

          For Google Play, the integrated dictionary doesn’t recognize any word that has furigana on all of the books I’ve read, so I don’t think it’s an issue with individual books. It also can’t recognize conjugated verbs or adjectives, so it would be great if there are any other platforms that can.