[mhb]

I was so looking forward to using the Kindle for reading a book in a different language and easily being able to highlight a word I didn't know and have it translate it.

Unfortunately the process of doing that on the Kindle is so arduous that it is unusable.

[mikekchar]

Yep. And the dictionaries are terrible (at least the Japanese ones). I still use the Kindle for reading, but it's not nearly as nice as I'd like. Strangely the English -> Japanese setup is much nicer. My wife uses it all the time and is thrilled with it. I use a dead tree version of a kid's Japanese to Japanese dictionary most of the time, but it's slow. I haven't been able to find anything similar that will work on the Kindle so far. I highly recommend transitioning to a native children's dictionary as soon as you can manage it (maybe with a translation dictionary as backup).