This information is not accurate: Kindle _format_ can store any Unicode character including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew etc.; you don't need Topaz for this. It is the Kindle _software_ that does not support these languages. In particular the default fonts do not contain non-Latin alphabets/glyphs for the most part (with exception of Greek). It is possible to replace the font so that more scripts can be displayed; I've done this on my Kindle so I can read Russian text that I've converted to Kindle format. So a relatively simple software update could improve some language support without impacting performance significantly (certainly for Cyrillic-based languages). It might require hardware enhancements to accommodate full requirements of 'world-readiness' since full-Unicode, bidi and complex script support require more code, hence more storage if not a more powerful processor. I haven't used the Kindle iPhone app, but it seems likely that it provides more expansive language support than Kindle since it is sold in Asian markets. So if the target device is iPhone/iPodTouch, Russian/Chinese/Japanese may actually work out.