I was wondering if it was possible to make yomi chan work with kindle books? If not specifically kindle, is there anyway I can read a novel with yomi chan?
Reading novels is still very much a pain for me, and if I could have yomi chan to help me through them, I think I’d get a lot more done.
It’s not literally yomichan, but the kindle has a built in dictionary and you can load custom ones to get jisho, or a J-J, or whatever you want. I’ve found it works reasonably well, though there is usually a bit of a delay on pulling up definitions – the version of the kindle you have will somewhat determine how long that is.
I actually recently asked this exact question and was pointed to ttsu reader, which seems really great for reading in a browser and is totally compatible with Yomichan! The one unfortunate point is you need to have a drm free epub on hand – which in most cases is going to require you putting in a little work to convert and probably de-drm your ebooks.
Yeah, I’ve found that the dictionaries don’t recognize a lot of things as well as yomi chan does so I think I’ll go this de-drm route. Even if it takes a bit of time, it’s only once per book, I guess. Saves a lot more time that I’d spend on lookups.
Thanks, I’ll try this out soon.
Are you reading on one of Amazon’s e-readers, like the Kindle Paperwhite? Or are you talking about the mobile app?
Yeah, I have a paperwhite. I didn’t try mobile, but I did try the app for desktop as well.
I’m surprised you’re having issues then. On the mobile app it can’t de-conjugate at all, so I thought that might have been your issue. On the Paperwhite I find it’s 95% as effective as Yomichan. So yes, Yomichan is better, but I’ve never had enough of an issue with the Paperwhite to warrant abandoning it.
(Granted, removing DRM is easy too if you prefer the desktop route.)
Maybe I’m choosing the wrong dictionaries, if you say it’s almost as good as yomi chan.
But, if DRM is easy to remove, then that’s good.
I just use the JMDict dictionary (basically jisho) and it works mostly fine. Sometimes it gets confused when words are in renyoukei if that has its dictionary entry (think 祈り instead of 祈る), but most of the time that is close enough to figure out the meaning. Every once in a while it just refuses to highlight the word I want it to highlight, which I think is probably a Kindle problem (not a dictionary problem).
Yeah, there are a couple tools for it. Not sure I can link to them here, but if you google around you’ll find them. I remove the DRM from all my books even though I still read on the kindle. I like to convert them to HTML so I can reference them more easily for studying, book clubs, etc.
I can also recommend this, I’m using exclusively that with my kindle, and in 95% of the cases, it works fine. This is the link for it btw. Just make sure to not do something stupid like me, and if you need the name dictionary, keep it separate from the main one. If you install the combined one, the kindle might get caught up on some names and not translate you the entire word. (For example, instead of 花畑, it might see 花 as a name with tons of readings and only show you that).
I’ll definitely check it out for when I read on the go. Thanks for the recommendation.
In the meantime, I managed to remove the DRM, and got it to work with yomi chan through ttsu reader as mentioned above. Might think about the advanced book club, though I’d have to check what type of schedule they got going.
woo hoo glad this still works!
been using ttsu but wanted to go between the kindle and the computer
Might not be the ideal place to ask this but I did finally throw kiwi and yomitan on the tablet. Which works fine with ttsu but anyone have a samsung tablet and pen? Yomitan with the pen anywhere near the screen is kind of super hard to control. Just bringing the pen near the screen yomitan pops up immediately and moving it away makes yomitan pop up on a different word nearby. Hard to describe unless you have experienced it.
Seems like with my kindle I can click on the word with the pen and the side loaded dictionary works fine, but yomitan is just autoloading so cannot click on the word I’d like to see. Didn’t see any obvious setttings to fix this. Telling it to use shift made no difference in the pen behavior (though shift plus the mouse, or using a finger touch responds more like the computer).
Anyone have any suggestions/fixes for getting the samsung pen under control with ttsu/kiwi/yomitan?
Is there a setting in the tablet that changes the distance or sensitivity of detecting the pen? Maybe if you can change that to only detect when it’s closer or touching? Just guessing though
not quite, but i have not gone through every single pen setting on the samsung side. I can check that later tonight but suspect there isn’t a solution TBH. Will see, the computer is still the easiest to use ttsu and then can quickly search a word and/cut paste a whole sentence to translate (though can do that on kindle too). But mostly with the laptop and the portable screen can even build cards or other learning materials in renshuu while reading fairly easily.
If I can tame the tablet, might be a nice in between of the kindle and the laptop.
If someone does have a samsung tablet / s pen maybe they will chime in with a perfect solution. As it is I cannot highlight words with the pen, yomitan just pops up and that’s kind of it. Really wasn’t expecting that behavior
If I turn yomitan off, though then I can highlight with the pen (though no yomitan) and click on translate or deepL options. 
I do have a tablet and pen but don’t really use my tablet anymore. I’ll try setting up ttsu on my phone with yomitan and see if the pen gives me the same issue. I mean I’ve been wanting to read on my phone for a while now, so it’s a good opportunity I guess.
this is really fucking stupid but for some reason alt-tabbing (or whatever the android equivalent is - going back to home screen and reopening the page) and tabbing back into kiwi fixes this issue for me (at least on my boox e-ink tablet). something does force it to reoccur at random but alt-tabbing out and returning fixes it so it’s workable for now. worst worst i just use my finger
it’s something to do with the sensitivity being increased way out of whack while kiwi is active
Alright, I did it, I see what you mean. I did look through the settings but I don’t see anything.
For me, when I hover over a word it loads the dictionary, I just have to be careful not to hover off the popup and I’ll be able to look through it. When I want to close the popup, I need to click on a blank spot in the book, or just use my finger which I find easier. Ironically, using my finger is much easier for the whole process though, because there’s no hovering, instead I just tap on the word so there’s more control. The pen feels kind of useless, do you even need to use it?
kewl neat idea (i’ll give it a shot)
now you know what I mean by hard to explain but def easy to experience
I do use the pen a lot for selecting and cutting pasting. Use the fold out keyboard and the pen a lot. Need to use, probably not but prefer the pen.
can confirm this did work on my samsung tab s7+
but only a quick test - haven’t tested to see if it goes stupid again (but expect it to)
Edit yeah it goes stupid after a while.
Not sure if it helps anything, but Firefox can also install Yomitan.
A pro is Firefox is supported by Discourse, and Kiwi not (old Chrome engine, I think).
I don’t use ttsu, but I have an S pen. Haven’t tested yet, though.