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Kindle for PC is currently ineligible for delivery of most dictionaries on the "Manage Your Content and Devices" page, and so cannot use them for word look-up.

Is this situation likely to change soon? Or is there some deep reason for it, which is likely to make it last a long time?

Colin McLarty
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Is this situation likely to change soon? Or is there some deep reason for it, which is likely to make it last a long time?

IMHO, Amazon most likely hasn't updated the Kindle for Windows and OSX apps, because not enough readers demanded custom dictionary support. (BTW, Amazon-bought dictionaries can be sent to the Kindle for Android app.)

Until Amazon fixes this, you can outsmart the Kindle for PC/OSX/iOS apps by changing the ASIN number of your custom dictionary to the ASIN number of one of the default dictionaries and overwriting the default dictionary with your custom dictionary. This involves the following steps:

  1. Remove the DRM from the custom dictionary that you want to use.

  2. Download a dictionary that you won't use, e.g. the American English dictionary (B003ODIZL6_EBOK.azw).

  3. Open your dictionary with Java Mobi Metadata Editor, change the existing ASIN entries to B003ODIZL6, save the file, rename it to B003ODIZL6_EBOK.azw and copy it to the My Kindle Content folder. (If your dictionary doesn't have ASIN entries, click the (+) button and select 113 ASIN and 504 ASIN.)

Obviously, you'd use the ASIN number of the French monolingual dictionary, if you wanted to replace the default monolingual French dictionary with a bilingual dictionary etc.

Community
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  • Well there's not much demand for the poor foreign language tools that are being offered. Someday Kindle will be a valuable asset in foreign language learning. But for now Kindle considers a few million foreign-language students around the word too small a niche market to justify any effort. Even a Kindle book on digital technology for learning Chinese, which recommends several tools for learning to read the language, does not mention Kindle as a resource! That book is Chinese Is Not Really That Hard: A Guide to Using Technology to Learn Chinese[Kindle Edition] By: Sia Mohajer – Colin McLarty Dec 05 '15 at 23:17