What are the best sites to buy eBooks in Chinese from? I thought I’d hop over to Amazon China and see what’s available but it turns out they don’t even officially sell the Kindle over there. I prefer traditional characters, but I’ll happily take simplified if the price is right. Would also like to use my US credit/debit card to make purchases.
I don’t have an eBook reader right now but I’m considering buying one in the near future, so if anyone has any thoughts on the readers with the best support for non-Latin character sets I’d like to hear that as well. I notice that the Kindle website says it now supports these for “certain file types,” which is rather ambiguous. But of course Amazon has very few if any books in Chinese.
I’ve read some of the other threads and they seem mostly focused on reading English books, but if I missed something feel free to merge or nudge me in the right direction.
Considering this, I might be better off just sticking to reading on my iPod (or getting an iPad), unless there’s an eBook reader that can automatically convert characters.
I’ve been looking into ebook readers for a while now. I really did not want to buy a Kindle. I hate the idea of being forced into only buying from Amazon. I was ready to buy the Sony reader but it was pretty expensive compared to the Kindle. Then I found the Kobo Touch. Same price as the Kindle but it looks like a better machine for me. The Kobo has been around for awhile but they just recently came out with a new edition. It looks like this one may be able to read Chinese books.
Here is a post from someone who has done it on the Kobo.
[quote]Edit: Someone in another thread is very happy with Chinese fonts and books on her Kobo.
Yes that was me that posted and my girlfriend is indeed very happy. Yes, with this new firmware, you should be able to add the Arabic fonts of your choice (TT or Open Type) and then choose the appropriate font when you load the book. I gave it a whirl with 6-7 Chinese books and 3 different Chinese fonts. All permutations and combinations worked.
My girlfriend finds a lot of Chinese books in .Doc format on the net. Usually we just save them to .RTF and have calibre convert it to EPub when adding it to Kobo, automatically. That has worked well so far.[/quote] mobileread.com/forums/archiv … 40985.html
The new update for the Kobo allows you to add the fonts that you want. If you add Chinese fonts then I guess it works.
I have a greenbook e-ink reader. I love it, it is super cheap and really light and has a really long battery life. It supports Chinese and English. It is a bit plasticky, and the OS is not as good as the Kindle’s, but I am happy with it.
Thanks for the replies. The Kobo looks nice but I’d like to see how it handles Chinese in person before I committed to that. The Greenbook machine looks like a pretty good option. But I think for me personally I’m going to stick with my iPod, and maybe even consider upgrading to an iPad in the future. I do not want to read simplified characters at this point in time, which is what most of the “免費” ebooks on the internet are. The ability to convert character sets on the fly is quite nice, if not perfect, and reading on an LCD is not as bad as I expected. Makes it easy to sync notes with my PC as well.
To toss out another suggestion, anyone here have a Hanlin? They seem to be known for excellent CJK support, amongst other things.
I bought the Kobo Touch ereader while I was back home and am quite enjoying it. I just checked out if it can read Chinese ebooks and the answer is yes. The Kobo allows you to add your own fonts so all I had to do was add a Chinese font (I used the one that came bundled with my Windows 7) and then load the book onto the ereader. Once you open the book, you just need to change the font to the Chinese one that you just added.
Now, I just need to find some extremely easy Chinese ebooks. The book I tried on the Kobo was “The Three Kingdoms” downloaded from Gutenberg books which is way too hard for my level.
Anyway, if anyone is looking for an alternative to the Kindle, check out the Kobo. I was tempted to buy the Kindle but I just don’t like buying into a product that forces me to continue buying only from their store. The Kobo uses epubs so I can buy from any store that I want (except Amazon of course)
I mostly download files from the Internet (many of them are in Simplified characters – the nice folks in the PRC seem more willing to “share” books!) and read them as pdfs or as text files. If they’re text, it’s most enjoyable to read them in the Pleco reader, since you don’t have to look anything up, just touch-touch-touch to see information about any unknowns.
The other thing you could do (more convoluted though) would be to buy a physical book and then OCR it. I use the ScanSnap desktop scanner for this purpose with English books, and I could see doing it with Chinese as well if I ever had time to mess with it. It automatically scans both sides of a page to a searchable .pdf file. If you have a long book, it’s best to divide it up into a couple of sections for ease of handling.
Hello all, I saw the above discussion about Kobo and greenbook. I’m looking for a Chinese e-reader that has the text-to-speech like the Kindle. It is a gift for an elderly that has poor eyesight.
I’m confused about language localization, etc. If I buy an English e-reader that can load Chinese character fonts, does it translate the English e-books to Chinese characters and be able to text-to-speech out the Chinese characters pronunciation?
Or does the localization only allow the e-reader to read Chinese e-books, but not translate the English e-books?
But can it still sound out the Chinese characters in text-to-speech for the Chinese e-books?
I can live with either one, but need to know what to buy and what to configure.
Any recommendation with the text-to-speech e-readers?
Thanks.
Edit: My Kindle Touch displays Chinese characters, but it does not convert text-to-speech for Chinese pronunciations.
Edit: I have not tried my Nook Color, but I suspect it is the same since Barnes Noble does not sell Chinese ebooks.
Wow… Neat… FYI… It seems that this E-book Site is presented by “OverDrive”. They are the same company that manages my US public library’s audio book, kindle and epub collections.
Yes, I had a closer look at the formats. There are no “Kindlebooks” I know that epub won’t work on the kindle (unless cracked and transferred) but what about DRM Adobe PDF’s?
What do you need to become a member of the Taipei Public Library? Do you have to live in Taipei?
I am or was a member of the National Library at the Cultural Center in Kaohsiung years ago, before e-books. We need some to compile list of city and regional libraries that have e-books and let us foreigners join.
I’m looking for Children’s Stories in Traditional Chinese BTW.
[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]Yes, I had a closer look at the formats. There are no “Kindlebooks” I know that epub won’t work on the kindle (unless cracked and transferred) but what about DRM Adobe PDF’s? [/quote] You can install Duokan on the Kindle to read epub and other formats. Duokan installs on top of the Kindle’s OS, so no cracking is needed. And you can revert back and forth between the Kindle’s OS and Duokan. Right now, Duokan supports only Kindle 2 and 3, and not the Kindle Touch.
AFAIK, an ARC or permanent residency card will do it. I don’t think this is address-specific. You can also get your library card linked to your MRT EZcard, which will enable you to do self check-out.
[quote="PapaAzucar"Right now, Duokan supports only Kindle 2 and 3, and not the Kindle Touch.[/quote]
Seriously, the Taipei Library seems to have a great collection of E-books, audio books and Music. But it is not a “Taiwanese” or Chinese Library. It is managed by the same company that manages many American libraries including my own, Over Drive. My library uses Overdrive to manage its Kindle/Epub and Audio book collection. If there is lending library for Chinese E-books, please let us know.
I’m going for the the Kaohsiung library card in a week or two. The online info say that the library is open to citizens with a Household registration. I have that, but I’m not a citizen. It should say legal residents. They have a decent collection of e-books and resources too. If some is in Kaohsiung, try to sign up and save me some arguing trouble. Thanks.
Does the Green Book Handle ㄅㄆㄇ enhanced fonts? I tried using them with the kindle on some PDF’s of Elementary School Books provided by the Ministry of education? The fonts did not work.
Can the Green Book do landscape mode? These books are really not confortable to read in portrait mode on a six inch screen. If you say yes… may want to sell my kindle…
EDIT… I took a quick look at the Kaohsiung Library Web Site. It seems they don’t have on line content yet I wonder if I can join the Taipei Library by mail. I have a snowballs chance in :fume: in getting there in person. What about the University Libraries here in Taiwan? Are they open to the general public?
RIght now I am enjoying my US library but I would like a local option too. Please tell us about more about Chinese E-readers and E books, especially the childrens books with ㄅㄆㄇ enhanced fonts.
Wifey is looking to score a reader here in Taiwan so we won’t have any trouble with fonts and such. Also we want to register her for all good library services. We have a few questions though:
Are the library services locked for ip or any such thing or will my wife be able to download books in Sweden (after registering here in Taiwan)?
Are there any good stores where you can buy books online?
Do the stores have any kind of geo restrictions?
Are the stores locked to their own devices or could I say buy a Sony reader but books from Greenbook?
Does anyone have any recommendation on what reader to buy? I’ve read somewhere before that Chinese characters didn’t look good on e-readers but that might be a thing of the past?
I wanted to share my experience with the kindle paperwhite:
I bought it for less than 8000 Yen in Japan and set it up in German.
If you use the option “always refresh page” or whatever it’s called again the characters are always sharp and look very good. But there is only one font to chose for the traditional chinese book I am reading while normally there are three.
The dictionary I installed is CEDICT and it works great with the kindle software. Installing it is also very easy, just download the file and put it in the dict. folder inside the kindle root folder.
Finding trad. chinese books seems to be the hardest part and I have not been very succesful, because even if you find a traditional version it might not be a proper translation from TW or HK, which makes it a lot less good to read.
so lately I am back to reading printed Chinese books from the second hand bookstore next door.
I didnt try Duokan yet but I am definitely going to.
If someone knows a good source for flawless trad. Chinese ebooks, kindle format, epub or mobi, please let me know! Of course would prefer a place where they can be bought or borrowed rather than pirated.
I too want to know if there are any good sources for traditional Chinese translations of English books available online. I am thinking of getting the wife a kindle fire hd so we can stop stockpiling bloody books but I’m not having much joy finding a site that sells ebooks in trad Chinese
I wonder if I can join the Taipei Library by mail. I have a snowballs chance in :fume: in getting there in person. What about the University Libraries here in Taiwan? Are they open to the general public?