Wrong language with Kindle Dictionary

18 December 2013 by Davide Mana 1 Comment

There’s an unwritten truth which I often repeat myself – a man’s computer-based disasters are another man’s jokes.
Our digital disasters, which cause us stress and waste of time, not to mention the loss of data, are one-click, quickly-fixed problems to those who know what to click.

This said…
An Italian reader was reading Bride of the Swamp God – and quite enjoying it, he said! – when he needed to check a word and the default dictionary did not work.
Or rather, it worked, but it was the wrong one.
English text – Italian dictionary.
He mailed me.
What gives?

Now, it took some work, but finally I found out what was wrong with my ebook.
Probably.

As I mentioned in the past, I write and edit my works using LibreOffice, and then I convert my files using the excellent Calibre software.

Now, something funny comes up – if you are using a Kindle Touch to read my ebooks, the dictionary might be set to Italian even if the text is in English.
This is because, for reasons too esotheric for me to understand, Kindle Touch (and only Kindle Touche) associates to the ebook the language of the interface of the software I used to create it.

So, creating an English language ebook using Calibre with an Italian interface, Kindle Touch will think my ebook is in Italian, and pop open the Italian Dictionary should you need to check a word.

Bummer, eh?

As you are reading this, the file of Bride of the Swamp God has been re-coded and should not give any problem anymore.
And if you purchased a copy of Bride (Thanks!!) and have the auto-update option enabled, I guess your file has been updated, and should be fine.

And as I said, I guess this probably is a no-brainer to some – to me was a small computer-related disaster.
But now it’s solved.
Hopefully.

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