Dictionary For ibook

[Alrwaiy90]

Hello dears
I'd like to add another dic to ibook but how ?
It's important to me i need to translate without exit from the app.
THANX

 

[twerppoet]

You can't. It's built into the OS. All you can do is change the iPads system language; at which point you will lose the English dictionary.

Check out Language support in the tech specs. Apple - The new iPad - View all the technical specifications.

While not as convenient there are plenty of third party dictionary apps. If you launch both iBooks and the dictionary app you can use the four finger swipe gesture to quickly switch between them.

In a normal ePub you can copy words, and then switch to the dictionary app and paste them. You could even do this with the Google Translate site.

iBook Author books do not allow a direct copy; however if you choose the search option after selecting the word, you can select and copy the word(s) out of the search dialog.

 

[srkhn]

It's little but annoying problem. I asked it in apple discussion. They said it has only English and Japanese. so pity...

 

[iPadFever1]

You don't need to change the language of the whole iPad. Only on the keyboard.


iPadFever1

 

[twerppoet]

It's little but annoying problem. I asked it in apple discussion. They said it has only English and Japanese. so pity...

Strange. Apple's tech page shows dictionary support for a couple dozen languages. Maybe that's only for spelling and auto-correction instead of the full dictionary, but that seems unlikely. Even the dictation feature supports more languages than that.

 

[twerppoet]

You don't need to change the language of the whole iPad. Only on the keyboard.

iPadFever1

Really? That's cool.

I don't have any non-English books, so I could not test whether changing the keyboard alone would work.

This works for definitions, as well as auto-correct and predictive spelling.

 

[dstuttgen]

Hello dears
I'd like to add another dic to ibook but how ?
It's important to me i need to translate without exit from the app.
THANX

Hello Airwaiy90 and welcome to the forum. I totally agree with your post as I am currently reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte. She switches back and forth between English and French, depending on what character is speaking. As I don't speak or read any language but English, I often wish for an easier in-reader dictionary experience. Let's hope Apple adds support for this.

Ciao, Dan

 

[KevinJS]

I've been looking for dictionaries to do the following:

Provide a translation and definition of a word, where the book is in French and the translation and definition are in English.

Provide a definition of a French word in French, in the same way as the "definition" function normally works for English.

My test vehicle is "20000 lieues sous les mers" by Jules Verne, available from the Gutenberg Project.

If I ever find what I'm looking for, I'll post the info here.

Sent from my iPad 4 HD mini

 

[waiman]

For those losing hairs over how to set up a dictionary (e.g. Chinese) other and default English, here is how I managed to get things working on iPad iOS6 and iBooks 3. There is no need to switch the system language to Chinese . Before continuing, ensure you have WiFi connection.

1. Look for a free Chinese ebook (ePub format) and upload it to your Dropbox folder.
2. Use iPad Dropbox app to access the Chinese ePub book just uploaded.
3. Use the Open-in function in Dropbox to open the ePub book (the icon on the top-right corner of Dropbox app).
4. Choose the Open in IBooks icon. This will copy of the ePub book to your IBooks local bookshelf on your iPad.
5. Once the ePub book is opened in iBooks, highlight a Chinese word to look-up in the dictionary (Choose "Define" to look-up word in dictionary).
6. At this point, iBooks will prompt "Would you like to download a dictionary now?" - This being that the word in not in the local dictionary yet. If it does not prompt you, look for another ePub book.
7. Click on "Download Dictionary". If your WiFi is not turned on, it will prompt you to do so.
8. Watch the download progress bar in action. It maytake a minute or two depending on your WiFi connection speed.
9. When the download is completed, the Chinese word highlighted earlier in the dictionary is displayed - Voila!

In this case, the dictionary downloaded is a Chinese-Chinese dictionary. Good thing is that the PinYin is shown in the look-up to help in reading the word.

To search for a Chinese-English translation, click on "Search Wikipedia" in display box of the dictionary. It will look up the word in Wikipedia. If this word is not found in Wikipedia and then click on "Wikitionary" form the list of sister projects (listed on the right-side of the page).

Voila again! You now have the word defined in Wikitionary, with explanation in English, pronunciation in Mandarin and other useful information.

I believe all of the above also works for other languages besides Chinese!

I have got screen grabs of the steps successful captured as well.

Best of luck for your attempts with other languages dictionaries.

 

[waiman]

Incidentally, once the Chinese dictionary is successfully installed and working in iBooks, it will work with other iPad applications as well.
For example, you can highlight a Chinese word while surfing with Safari and the "Define" will open up the Chinese dictionary. I should think this will work also with other dictionary as well.