Having a portable dictionary on hand is essential for anyone traveling to a foreign county. After searching for homebrew dictionary solutions for the Nintendo DS, I managed to stumble across a nice little application called NewDictS that utilizes open source StarDicts. Using your NDS and a flash card, it’s possible to have all sorts of dictionaries at your finger tips. It took me a while to figure out how to do this, but luckily for you, I’ve condensed it all down into one easy to use guide.
Step 1: DLDI Patch
If your flash card doesn’t support automatic DLDI patching, you’ll have to patch the file before you begin. For more information on that, go to the excellent DLDIWiki.
Step 2: Move the application to your DS
After downloading all the necessary files (which can be found at the end of this post), you’re ready to start moving files to your DS. Move the folder called ‘NewDictS’ to the root of your card. This is where you’ll store the StarDicts you download. You can move the ‘NewDictS.nds’ application wherever you’d like.
Step 3: Download the StarDicts
Head on over to the StarDict download page. The links we’re interested are about a third of the way down the page in blue, right above the orange ‘Dictionaries’ box. Find a dictionary set that you like, and download it using the ‘tarball’ link. For this guide, we’ll say that I downloaded a set called ‘English-Chinese’.
Step 4: Preparing the StarDicts
Now that you’ve downloaded the file containing the dictionary, use a program like WinRAR to extract the files. Inside the directory, you’ll find three different files (.dz, .idx, and .ifo). For my English-Chinese dictionary, they’d be named like this:
English-Chinese.dict.dz
English-Chinese.idx
English-Chinese.ifo
The .ifo file is fine as it is, but the .dz and .idx files take a couple extra steps to get ready.
Step 5: Opening the .dz File
To open the .dz file, you’ll need a program called 7zip. Use 7zip to open up the .dz file, and extract the .dict file. After I was done, I had this:
English-Chinese.dict
Set that file aside, and discard the .dz file.
Step 6: Converting the .idx file to .aoi and .wrd
Now it’s time to take care of the .idx file. To do this, you’ll need to use the ‘ToAoi’ program that I included at the bottom of my post. And in order for this program to function properly, make sure you have Microsoft’s .NET framework installed on your computer. Open up ToAoi, and check to see that ‘English’ is selected under Language, and ‘Dictionary’ is selected under File Type. Now go ahead and Open the .idx file in ToAoi, then hit Convert. Two Save As boxes will pop up, one for the .aoi and one for the .wrd file. Be sure to keep the name of these files the same as the rest of your dictionary files. Using my English-Chinese example, you should have something like this:
English-Chinese.idx
English-Chinese.aoi
English-Chinese.wrd
Make sure to keep the .idx file, you’ll need this later.
Step 6: Putting all the StarDict files onto your DS
If you’ve done everything right up until this point, you should have five files total. For my English-Chinese dictionary, they’d be:
English-Chinese.dict
English-Chinese.ifo
English-Chinese.idx
English-Chinese.aoi
English-Chinese.wrd
All you have to do now, is move these files to the ‘dict’ directory in the NewDictS folder at the root of your card (NewDictS\dict). And you should be all set! You now have a fully functioning dictionary on your Nintendo DS for free. The controls are pretty simple, and you can find more information on NewDictS here. If you have any questions, or need some clarification, shoot me an e-mail at andy@alutz.com.
Disclaimer: I did not create NewDictS, I only wrote this guide. All development credit goes to hulihutu, Phillips, and Sesa. Thanks guys!
Files:
July 29th, 2008 - 3:52 pm
[...] have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let’s hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run. Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary [Street [...]
July 29th, 2008 - 4:08 pm
[...] have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let’s hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run. Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary [Street [...]
July 29th, 2008 - 4:11 pm
[...] have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let’s hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run. Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary [Street [...]
July 29th, 2008 - 4:17 pm
[...] have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let’s hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run. Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary [Street [...]
July 29th, 2008 - 9:00 pm
Thanks for this helpful guide! I really want to do this… but when I download the dictionaries there is no idx file, just a sub file. Any advice??
July 29th, 2008 - 9:12 pm
What’s the link to the dictionary you’re trying to download? I’ve never downloaded a StarDict that didn’t have one. The only thing I can think of is that you didn’t use the ‘tarball’ option. But if you can give me the link, I’ll try to see what’s wrong.
July 30th, 2008 - 12:57 am
Great guide. Is there a Mac equivalent for ToAoi? I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. Or, if possible, put the English-Chinese dictionary on rapidshare or something? Because that’s all I really need atm. Either way, great write up. Thanks.
July 30th, 2008 - 1:53 am
Top stuff, I’ll be giving this a go ASAP.
July 30th, 2008 - 6:16 am
[...] dictionary that can be carried around, which may actually become useful. Check out the link below. [Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary] addthis_url = [...]
July 30th, 2008 - 6:30 am
Hey Steve, as far as I’m aware, there’s no ToAoi utility for Macs. It’s unfortunate, seeing as how I use OS X as my main OS. But here’s a Megaupload link with a RAR containing the English-Chinese files:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8X07W09G
Enjoy.
July 30th, 2008 - 8:32 am
[...] un blog llamado Street Static han presentado una guía sobre un homebrew muy interesante pues se trata de un programa para [...]
July 30th, 2008 - 9:47 am
[...] have a DS at Lifehacker HQ, so let’s hear how it works for you if you give NewDictS a run. Turn your Nintendo DS into a Dictionary [Street [...]
July 30th, 2008 - 7:15 pm
I followed the instructions above, but when I tried a spanish english dictionary, when I loaded up the nds file and selected the dictionary, it gave me some error in chinese. I was using a R4 revolution.
July 31st, 2008 - 8:01 am
i have absolutely no idea on how to do this so wow thats amazing who ever figures out how to do cutoes or brovo or CONGRATS
July 31st, 2008 - 8:03 am
to sad for me cause i aint got any boyfriend
July 31st, 2008 - 8:04 am
to sad for me cause i aint got any boyfriend because i need 1 anyone said they need a girlfriend
August 5th, 2008 - 4:24 am
Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to some of you. I’m currently out of the country, and away from my computer. As soon as I have access to a decent computer, I’ll try to help as best as possible.
August 9th, 2008 - 10:52 am
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I tried very hard to find a spanish dictionary for my nds and I’m so happy that I found this useful tip. I works like a charm!
August 11th, 2008 - 6:37 am
August 20th, 2008 - 3:53 pm
Searched a bit and found some info, so I wrote a small perl-script for converting idx to aoi and wrd. Guess it should work on any platform that has perl.
for my $base (@ARGV) {
$base =~ s/\.idx$//i;
unless (open IDX, “”, “$base.aoi”;
open WRD, “>”, “$base.wrd”;
my $fpos = 0;
my $data;
while (read IDX, $data, 1) {
if ($data eq “\x00″) {
print AOI pack “N”, $fpos;
print WRD “\r\n”;
read IDX, $data, 8;
$fpos = tell IDX;
}
else {
print WRD $data;
}
}
}
August 20th, 2008 - 4:00 pm
Hmm… posting perlcode didnt work all that well… so here we go again:
for my $base (@ARGV) {
$base =~ s/\.idx$//i;
unless (open IDX, “<”, “$base.idx”) {
warn “Couldn’t open $base.idx: $!\n”;
next;
}
open AOI, “>”, “$base.aoi”;
open WRD, “>”, “$base.wrd”;
my $fpos = 0;
my $data;
while (read IDX, $data, 1) {
if ($data eq “\x00″) {
print AOI pack “N”, $fpos;
print WRD “\r\n”;
read IDX, $data, 8;
$fpos = tell IDX;
}
else {
print WRD $data;
}
}
}
September 5th, 2008 - 11:08 pm
i need help when i go in it said can not find any dictionary. i am chinese too. i need a eng one.
October 4th, 2008 - 8:32 pm
[...] before I left for China this summer, I wrote an article about how to turn your Nintendo DS into a dictionary. Well the post got picked up on Lifehacker, a productivity blog that’s entirely more [...]