FAQ

From where are you getting the source dictionaries?

Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, provides free scans of a variety of Hawaiian language texts, including the three source dictionaries that HawDict uses.

I've found a problem with an entry in one of the dictionaries, what can I do?

Open an issue here on the site with the book and the problem entry. Unfortunately the source text provided by Ulukau has many scanning and formatting errors. While HawDict does fix many of the mistakes, each dictionary contains thousands of entries and I simply can't verify them all myself.

Why do I need to run HawDict myself? Why can't you just provide the final dictionary files?

Unfortunately all three source dictionaries that HawDict uses are still protected under copyright. While scans of these books are provided freely through Ulukau, I do not have permission to redistribute them or their contents. So HawDict works by downloading the scans from Ulukau for you, just as if you'd visited the site in a web browser. It's the best I can do.

Can I redistribute the final dictionary files that HawDict creates?

Not unless you are the copyright holder, or have explicit permission from the copyright holder.