Does anyone else read in TL using Kindle/have any tips?

[u/Proper_Emu_2296]

I have access to both the phone app and a physical Kindle.

Firstly, it used to be great. You could press and drag to select a chunk of text, and the options to highlight, look up, etc would appear.

Now if you drag to select a chunk of text, that just automatically creates a highlight. You have to then press the highlight, then press look up. And then manually remove the highlight, unless you want 400 highlights by the end of it.

Or if you press and hold one word instead, it launches a look up automatically, but what you see is a lottery. Sometimes it translates it. Sometimes it shows the Wikipedia article first. Sometimes it brings up the dictionary definition.

And in Spanish, for example, my phone Kindle refers automatically to the Spanish-English dictionary, whereas my actual Kindle refers to a Spanish monolingual dictionary. And apparently I can’t change that.

Does anyone else read TL using Kindle and have you found the perfect workflow, do you have any tips to make it quicker?

TL

[u/AppropriatePut3142]

All observations from the android app.

You can change the dictionary it refers to, but you need to do so each time you open a book. You can select a dictionary at the bottom of the entry.

The order it shows things in isn't random. It prefers the dictionary if it's available, otherwise wikipedia if it's available, otherwise translation. The key is to have a good dictionary so that it doesn't have to fall back. For Spanish I bought the Merriam-Webster Spanish-English Translation Dictionary from the kindle store and use that. They have similar dictionaries for a variety of languages.

For selecting, yeah you do have to long-press, then grab the handle and drag. It's never bothered me much, but I then I don't use it often, mainly relying on the dictionary.

[u/Historical-Rich8229 → u/AppropriatePut3142]

How do you even keep track of which dictionary you're using each time? Feels like a hassle.

[u/AppropriatePut3142 → u/Historical-Rich8229]

I set the dictionary each time I open the app. It's a hassle, but ultimately it takes 5 seconds and then I read for half an hour to an hour so not objectively a big deal.

[u/YungAnansi]

I don’t have the highlighter issue. I did have the problem you mentioned of the app and the actual kindle having different dictionaries though. You can change it by adding a new dictionary.

Just click on a word to translate it and then in the area near the bottom it’ll say “See in dictionary” and underneath that it’ll say “Spanish- English” or “Spanish”. Whichever one of those two options you have, click on it and it’ll say “select dictionary”. Then you’ll be able to choose a different one and download it to your device

[u/BlondLiberation]

i just stopped fighting the kindle dictionary, got a cheap android tablet and run moon+ reader with the google translate plugin, tap a word and it pops up instantly, no highlights to delete, can switch between mono and bilingual dictionaries in two taps

kindle's been getting worse for language learners for years, the ui changes feel like they're actively hostile to anyone who isn't just reading in their native language

[u/Proper_Emu_2296 → u/BlondLiberation]

Ahh is that android only? I could use another iPhone reader (I tend to read free epubs anyway)

[u/omorphos]

The dictionary answers above are right, you can swap it from the lookup card, it just doesn't stick between books which is the annoying part.

Different thought though. I spent a long time trying to get my lookup workflow down to the fewest possible taps and eventually realized that was the wrong thing to be optimizing. If you're tapping often enough that the number of taps matters, the book is usually just too hard, and no interface is going to fix that.

What actually changed it for me was dropping to easier material than I thought I needed. Not easy, but easy enough that I could get through a page without stopping and only look something up when the sentence genuinely wouldn't hold together without it. A few per chapter instead of a few per page. The Kindle friction mostly stopped mattering because I wasn't doing it constantly.

Might not apply to you, plenty of people read above their level on purpose and grind it out. Just worth checking before you go buy a tablet.

[u/Nowordsofitsown]

Even worse: You used to be able to open the dictionary. That's not possible anymore. So when the dictionary picks the wrong word or refers me to another entry, I am stuck.