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Reading Chinese on my Paperwhite I need to look up lots of characters. Often the Kindle offers me the Wikipedia lookup first and I have to swipe over to the translation or dictionary. Wikipedia is literally never the one I want. Is there a way to stop the Kindle from going to it, or at least stop the Kindle from offering it as the first choice?

People not familiar with Chinese may not see why this is such a problem, so I'll explain. Many (maybe most) words in modern Chinese are two characters long. But sentences are written with no breaks between words. So you often look up two-character combinations -- and you will often pick two characters that some given dictionary does not recognize as one word. In that case Bing translate will almost always get it right for you. Wikipedia will almost never help at all. Wikipedia is great, but is not designed to help people read novels!

Combined with other infelicities in the way Kindle handles Chinese characters, the frequent pointless detours through Wikipedia waste a lot of time.

Colin McLarty
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I share your pain and although I don't have a solution (almost in 2020...) I do have a viable explanation why they keep it this way.

Two factors, based on my thinking: - They don't want to show an empty card, so they switch to another source when a dictionary definition is not found. (to Wikipedia) - They have to pay for translations over a certain quota, so they avoid doing unnecessary queries, and therefore will never show the online translation card first.

In addition, it seems likely that they don't pay for Wikipedia searches and don't care about the unnecessary, pointless, mindless load that they make on Wikipedia servers.

In my opinion they should show the dictionary card first, regardless of whether a definition was found. Show the online translation second, and the Wikipedia one third. (Assuming that they would never pay extra and show the online translation first... which would actually be best for users). So I suggest that they ALWAYS show:

Dictionary-Translation-Wikipedia

Current behavior, as of Dec 2019: Regardless of whether the WiFi is turned on, they show: - Dictionary-Wikipedia-Translation when the term is found in the dictionary. - Wikipedia-Translation-Dictionary when the term is NOT found in the dictionary.

Stan
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Enable airplane mode. No Wifi = no Wikipedia lookup.

  • No. Then the Kindle still goes to Wikipedia first. Only it gives an error message saying to turn off airplane mode. It also seems to block access to the Chinese-English dictionary. – Colin McLarty Dec 01 '15 at 18:54
  • I'll only go to the Wikipedia first, if the default dictionary doesn't contain the word. Did you set the default dictionary to the Modern Chinese English dictionary or the monolingual Chinese dictionary?

    (Settings > Device Options > Language and Dictionaries > Dictionaries > Chinese)

     –  Dec 01 '15 at 20:35
  • Yet it goes to Wikipedia when Wikipedia does not have the word, even when translation does have it. I use both the Modern Chinese English dictionary and the monolingual Chinese as defaults at different times. The problem remains that Kindle goes to Wikipedia first when I never want it to go there at all. Kindle look up of Chinese characters is balky in several ways worse than this one, but it seems this problem should be easily fixable by setting user preferences. – Colin McLarty Dec 01 '15 at 21:07
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No, you cannot.

Airplane mode just makes Kindle go to the Wikipedia panel to tell you to turn off airplane mode. As Nemo XXX says, this happens when the the word is not in the dictionary.

If a word is not even in the dictionary, Wikipedia is unlikely to have an article on it! But for now Kindle insists on letting the Wikipedia panel give you this bad news. Only then will Kindle let you go to translate for the answer you actually wanted.

Colin McLarty
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  • Airplane mode apparently disables all dictionaries except the American Heritage. That's incorrect. My Kindle is almost always in Airplane mode and I can access all dictionaries regardless of the language.

    Have you tried the following:

    1. Change the default Chinese dictionary?

    2: Change the UI to Chinese?

     –  Dec 04 '15 at 15:21
  • Also check the book's language metadata with Java Mobi Metadata Editor

    (If the language metadata entry of a Chinese book is defined as English, it'll never cause the Chinese dictionary to open.)

     –  Dec 04 '15 at 15:27
  • @Nemo The metadata is working since my Kindle very often succeeds at looking up the Chinese words. There is a problem changing the default dictionary, since my Kindle reports that is already on the Chinese-English dictionary when this happens (or the monolingual Chinese dictionary, sometimes, depending on which I set). Nonetheless I have tried changing to the other Chinese dictionary which the Kindle duly reports I have done, yet it will not access that dictionary either when on airplane mode. – Colin McLarty Dec 04 '15 at 15:36
  • @Nemo Do you use Chinese dictionaries? Or which ones do you use? – Colin McLarty Dec 04 '15 at 15:39
  • The metadata is working since my Kindle very often succeeds at looking up the Chinese words.

    Humor me, and double-check it with the Metadata editor. Also, it couldn't hurt to temporarily change the UI language to Chinese. If none of this makes a difference, there might be a Chinese-only firmware bug, because I can use non-English dictionaries in three different languages and only get the Wikipedia dialog box, if the word isn't in the default dictionary.

    Nemo Do you use Chinese dictionaries? No. But I use a home-made Arabic dictionary without any problems in airplane mode.

     –  Dec 04 '15 at 15:40
  • @NemoXXX I set the UI language as Chinese once, since some people reported this led to better updating of the Chinese font. On my Kindle it seems to have made no lasting difference. Can you describe how to access the Metadata editor and what I should look for, or tell me where I can find instructions on line? Can it be done without using special software such as Sigil or Calibre? – Colin McLarty Dec 04 '15 at 15:50
  • @NemoXXX To avoid one misunderstanding, yes it only happens to me too when the word is not in the default dictionary. My question all along has been, can I simply opt out of having it happen? The answer is, no I cannot. Accessing dictionaries in airplane mode is an interesting issue but really should be a new question – Colin McLarty Dec 04 '15 at 15:59
  • Can you describe how to access the Metadata editor [...]?

    Download the software, double-click the .jar file, open your book with it and click the Language button.

    [...]My question all along has been, can I simply opt out of having it happen?

    AFAIK, you can't. If you have an older Kindle or haven't updated your firmware to the latest version, you might be able to jail-break it and install a patched version of the dictionary applet. For more information check out the MR Kindle Developer's Corner.

     –  Dec 04 '15 at 17:04
  • @NemoXXX I made this a new question since I think others would benefit too if you post your answer there. – Colin McLarty Dec 04 '15 at 17:11
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I just found out the perfect method:

Step 1: Choose your secondary dictionary (for me, it's Oxford Dictionary) in the settings of the device as the main dictionary.

Step 2: When you start a new book, click on a word and choose your favorite (in my case: hungarian) dictionary instead of secondary.

So, kindle will know that if your mother language dictionary can't find a word, it has to switch to the 2nd dictionary instead of Wikipedia.

D Molnar
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