Latin On your Kindle/E-Reader

Latin Learning Latin
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Note: I have put this thread here, rather than in the Greek or open sections, because I have only tested this with Latin. Likewise, whilst I say “e-reader”, I managed this on a Kindle Paperwhite 2nd Edition. Your experience may well vary.

Things you will need:
A Kindle (or e-reader of your choice)
The Latin Library (https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/)
Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/)
A Latin dictionary (optional)
MS Word (or the ability to do some basic HTML editing/another word processor) (optional)

Step 1: Getting your texts

You don’t have to use the Latin Library, but the texts are safely out of copyright and they offer A LOT of texts. Head on over there and look. Some texts are premade and can be found here: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/epubs.html , others you will have to make via copy and pasting the text directly into a word file.

Step 2: Getting them kindle ready

This is easy. If you are using one of the pre-made EPUBs, just import it into Calibre and click “convert” and choose MOBI. Done. But what about making your own? Say you want to read Curtius Rufus? This is what I do. Important the entire text into Word. Then use the “heading” feature in your home ribbon to break up the text and therefore auto generate a table of contents. You can choose how in depth you go with this. E.g title of work in H1, individual books in H2, subsections in H3 etc etc. Then save the DOCX and import it to Calibre, convert it to MOBI and ask it to auto-generate contents.
You can import them to your kindle, and that’s it, you’re done. Unless..

Step 3: Dictionary (Optional)

This is optional and, depending on what texts you’re reading, pointless. Go into the kindle store and buy a Latin dictionary that can recognise inflections. I use the Latin English Lexicon by Thomas McCarthy (2013 edition). Is it great? No. Is it cheap? Yes. Does it work? Kind of. You have to trick your Kindle into letting it be the default English dictionary, but yes it works. I like to use it for coming up with synonyms as I read. Link here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BO4ZKYW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Why do this?

Most of us read a lot on an e-reader anyway. In the older days we used to use the wonderful textkit readers and the stuff on downloebles (eDonnely). These are well and good, but it can be hard to read PDFs on kindles. This way, you get texts that act like any other e-book.

It also opens up a huge new world for newbie readers. Go read Caesar, read Eutropius, read the easier Ciceronians. Hell, read out there crap like Lhomond or Mirandola if you like. You can now, at little to no cost or effort.

Happy reading.

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Nice! I’ve been using a Kindle Oasis or Sony Digital Paper lately for all of my reading (Greek and Latin). I’ll add my own process, which is based around PDFs, so more complicated, and dictionary lookup is impossible. But you don’t need a mobi formatted book:

  1. Download the PDF for anything public domain (pre-1927, I think). One option is from Hathi with Hathi Download Helper. If using HDH, download as images.

2a) If you have a large screened reader like Sony Digital Paper or an old Kindle DX: use img2pdf to assemble a pdf of minimal size, if you have an image directory, otherwise use the downloaded pdf, and stick it onto the reader.

2b) If you are using a Kindle Oasis or Kindle Paperwhite, you’ll need to crop the images with imagemagick before reassembling into a PDF. Here is a command that can be run from a bash prompt against a directory of images to chop off 55 pixels from the top of every page, 65 from the left, 80 from the right, and 100 from the bottom:

for FF in $(ls *png) ; do covert $FF -chop 0x55 -chop 65x0 -gravity East -chop 80x0 -gravity South -chop 0x100 output/$FF ; done

Then use img2pdf to assemble.

The cropping is an annoying process, with some trial and error, but it’s nice to have an OCT or Teubner on your Kindle, with font big enough to read. I was actually thinking of creating a Textkit page and putting these up for download.

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I was wondering, Scribo, how you managed to trick your Kindle into accepting the Latin-English Lexicon as the default dictionary. I have an ipad with a Kindle app. I have the same dictionary and would like to use it to look up words while reading Latin texts on Kindle without switching apps. But it seems Latin is not on the list of languages Kindle reckons with so I have to switch to the dictionary app on Scriba if I want to look up a word and then switch back to the Kindle text. Do you (or anyone else) have a way out of this? Thanks

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Potentially. I should have been a little clearer about this in the original post, and I should say again I have only managed this on the physical device, no idea about the app.

Go into your settings (this involves clicking the cog and opening up all settings). You have two options, language and dictionaries. The former allows you to set the default language of the device, the latter lets you choose which dictionary is used first. I set my default for English to be the Latin-English Lexicon.

Sadly, no native support for Latin or for adding other languages. Not sure if that will work with the app.

Joel, that looks like a cool work around actually. I do love the Latin Library editions, but often find myself pondering a recieved word and wishing I had an app crit. I know some of the older OCTs are now public domain (depending on where you live), and I suspect this method could make PDFs generally more readable on e-readers.

If I had the time I would maybe try to do something with the ad usum Delphini series, the text needs to be extracted and reformatted. Surprisingly, the Latin paraphrases contained therein tend to be of a very high quality. Shame they’re not more useful.

For Greek, there is a website that I can absolutely not remember, that has made available EPUBS of many Greek texts. I have been racking my brain about this. You could potentially do the same trick with the dictionary I mentioned. This might be a useful link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iviwMAas_Hw

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This is a great thread. Thank you, Scribo and Joel. Love the technical hacks. More like this, please.

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I used to do this a lot cos the dictionary was a great help. Abby fine reader is great for conversion, combined with calibre. Once you have to look up less vocab, it’s less useful.
The Kindle app is not as versatile for the dictionary. Get the real Kindle and there are several Latin dictionaries that work.
I read Harrius potter on Kindle, after conversion from pdf, I think. My dream was to get a Latin Spanish dictionary so I could learn both.
Apologies if I have duplicated info from someone else.