This is a Japanese-English dictionary based on the JMdict and JMnedict and Tatoeba database for e-Ink Kindle devices.

Features:

• lookup of inflected verbs.
• lookup for Japanese names.
• the dictionaries can be downloaded as separate files or as one big dictionary (the combined dictionary does not include example sentences due to file size restrictions)

The dictionary has been tested on Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Oasis. It should also work well with other e-ink Kindle devices

The dictionary will not work well on Kindle Fire or Kindle Android App, or any Android based Kindle, because the Kindle software on those platforms does not support inflection lookups.

You can download the latest version of the dictionary from here.

There are in total 3 dictionaries:

• jmdict.mobi: Contains only data from the JMedict database, with additional examples. It does not contain proper names.
• jmnedict.mobi: Contains only Japanese proper names from the JMnedict databse.
• combined.mobi: Contains the data from both of the above dictionaries, but no examples.

To install any of the dictionaries (you can also install all three of them) into your device follow these steps:

• for 1st-generation Kindle Paperwhite devices, ensure you have firmware version 5.3.9 or higher as it includes improved homonym lookup for Japanese;
• connect your Kindle device via USB;
• copy the the .mobi file for the dictionary you want to use to the documents/dictionaries sub-folder;
• eject the USB device;
• on your device go to Home > Settings > Device Options > Language and Dictionaries > Dictionaries and set JMdict Japanese-English Dictionary as the default dictionary for Japanese.

NOTE: Unfortunately the Kindle Android App does not support dictionary inflections, yielding verbs lookup practically impossible. No known workaround.

• rename jmdict.mobi or any of the other two dictionaries as B005FNK020_EBOK.prc

• connect your Android device via USB

• copy B005FNK020_EBOK.prc into Internal Storage/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files/ or /sdcard/android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files

This will override the default Japanese-Japanese dictionary.

Requirements:

• Linux or Windows with Cygwin (might also work on macOS with a few changes)

• Python version 3

  • Pycairo
  • Pillow
  • htmlmin

Inside of the makefile you can change the max number of sentences per entry, compression, as well as which sentences to include:

# The Kindle Publishing Guidelines recommend -c2 (huffdic compression),
# but it is excruciatingly slow. That's why -c1 is selected by default.
COMPRESSION ?= 1
# Sets the max sentences per entry only for the jmdict.mobi.
# It is ignored by combined.mobi due to size restrictions.
# If there are too many sentences for the combined dictionary,
# it will not build (exceeds 650MB size limit).
SENTENCES ?= 5
# This flag determines wheter only good and verified sentences are used in the
# dictionary. Set it to TRUE if you only want those sentences.
# It is only used by jmdict.mobi.
# It is ignored bei combined.mobi. there it is always true
# this is due to size constraints.
ONLY_CHECKED_SENTENCES ?= FALSE

Build with make to create all 3 dictionaries:

make

or use any of the following commands to create a specific one:

make jmdict.mobi
make jmnedict.mobi
make combined.mobi

Please be aware that as of now the combined dictionary does not contain example sentences as this would push the mobi beyond the file size limit

• Leverage more of the JMdict data:

  • cross references

• Add Furigana to example sentences

• Create better covers

• Find a way to have sentences in the combined dictionary (maybe less names). The size limit for mobi of 650MB is reached quite fast.

• Jim Breen and the JMdict/EDICT project as well as the ENAMDICT/JMnedict
• The Tatoeba project
• John Mettraux for his EDICT2 Japanese-English Kindle dictionary
• Choplair-network for their Nihongo conjugator

• John Mettraux's EDICT2 Japanese-English Kindle dictionary

• Amazon Kindle Store