Thai on Kindle anyone?

[BananaBandit]

I'm able to get or make Thai-language PDF documents and then put them on my Kindle. 

 

But, in my view, using PDFs on Kindle is annoying. One must constantly scroll, zoom in, zoom out, etc.

 

Anytime I try to convert a PDF to a Kindle-friendly MOBI file, the result is gibberish text. 

 

Any of y'all have better luck? Or a better idea?

[timendres]

My knowledge is limited here, but when creating a MOBI, I used HTML to write the content, then a tool converted that to MOBI format. In this instance, I needed to use CSS to get the Thai font included in the MOBI in order to get the Kindle to display the text correctly. Thus, I believe that the tool you are using to convert the PDF to MOBI is failing to include the Thai font in the resulting MOBI file. Here is an article about EPUB files and how the Thai font is included:

 

    http://www.paulsalvette.com/2011/08/how-to-embed-thai-fonts-in-ebooks.html

 

What tool are you using for the conversion?

Edited February 7, 2021 by timendres

[JHicks]

3 hours ago, BananaBandit said:

Anytime I try to convert a PDF to a Kindle-friendly MOBI file, the result is gibberish text. 

I think you'll struggle if the pdf relies on a cmap file. If you open it in Acrobat and go to properties / fonts, there will be a line for each font that tells you the encoding. If it says "Identity-H" I don't think a conversion app will be able to pull the text out of it.

[BananaBandit]

On 2/7/2021 at 6:18 AM, timendres said:

What tool are you using for the conversion?

 

I believe it's called Calibre.

[BananaBandit]

23 hours ago, JHicks said:

If you open it in Acrobat and go to properties / fonts

 

From what I can tell, I don't have Acrobat.  I believe I have just Adobe Reader. 

[foreverlomsak]

Try this one it works with english PDF to mobi.

Convert Files - Free LIT to MOBI converter. Free online ebook converter.

Don't know it it will work with Thai, if it does brilliant, if not sorry you're back to square one

[timendres]

1 hour ago, BananaBandit said:

I believe it's called Calibre.

 

Okay. The documentation does point out one possible issue, which may be your problem, although I doubt it. That is the issue of the "character encoding" of the input source. For languages like Thai or Japanese, the most commonly used encoding (especially for things like HTML for web pages) is "UTF-8". If your PDF is not using UTF-8, then this might be an issue. You can read more about this here:

    https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#how-do-i-convert-my-file-containing-non-english-characters-or-smart-quotes

 

Secondly, there is the issue of a Thai font being available to the eReader. TBH, I do not know if Thai fonts are built into the Kindle or not. If not, then they must be included in the MOBI file. The only thing I can see in Calibre that would allow you to deal with this is the "Extra CSS" option.

   https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#extra-css

 

As mentioned before, CSS allows one to include a Thai font. You could, in theory, download a Thai font from Google Fonts, then add CSS that referenced this font. I do not know if Calibre would be smart enough to pull the font data itself into the MOBI result, and you would, of course, need to code the CSS to match the styling of the Thai content itself (it is possible to get this to work across all text by using a Thai font that supports ASCII characters, then applying the CSS style globally to all text).

[JHicks]

1 hour ago, BananaBandit said:

From what I can tell, I don't have Acrobat.  I believe I have just Adobe Reader

Yeah I meant Reader. I think they call it Acrobat Reader but you're right it's not the full Acrobat package. I don't know why but some pdfs use their own system for numbering glyphs and then use a kind of lookup table that converts them to unicode. You can tell because the encoding will be "Identity-H". When the conversion software tries to retrieve the text it gets the raw numbers when it wants the unicode, so you end up with gibberish. Could be totally unrelated to your issue but does happen.

[klaus80]

Unfortunately the best way to read Thai on Kindle is as a PDF file. However, to overcome the issue of having to zoom/scroll the pages, you should save the PDF at the same size as the Kindle screen. Here is my workflow:

 

1. In MS Word, set custom page size to the size of your Kindle screen e.g. 4.5 x 6.3 inches.

2. Paste Thai text into the Word document and adjust the font face and font size of the text until it is a good size for you to read at full page on the Kindle. e.g. Cordia New, 14 pt 

3. Save as PDF and transfer to your Kindle.

 

Now you should be able to comfortably read quality Thai text page by page without zooming and scrolling.

[BananaBandit]

23 hours ago, klaus80 said:

In MS Word, set custom page size to the size of your Kindle screen e.g. 4.5 x 6.3 inches.

 

Brilliant!