Oxford Chinese Dictionary English-Chinese / Chinese-English First Edition

Every work has its limitations. Here, the English to Chinese section translates English only into characters, with no pinyin. Basically this section is written for Chinese speakers or else English speakers who already read Chinese very well. That is not me! I will often use the English to Chinese section of a dictionary to find a difficult character by guessing from context what it might mean, or to check if I have correctly understood a translation from the Chinese to English side. I cannot do that with this dictionary.I can only review the Chinese to English section. If you read Chinese beyond a textbook learners level, or if you are a translator then you should have this.The page layouts are beautiful, and the fonts are larger than other comprehensive Chinese-English dictionaries. As John Dowdell says in his review, it covers far more compound words and phrases than any other Chinese-English dictionary, and these compounds repay the time it takes to read them.Students do not have to go far in Chinese before meeting phrases that make no sense on a word-by-word basis. Seeing the same or a nearby phrase here will overcome the problem. And even with smaller dictionaries often the easiest way to look up a difficult character is to look up the head character of the phrase it occurs in. That strategy will work much more often with this dictionary than with others.Translators are likely to benefit too. I am far from translating Chinese but I have published translations from French and German into English. Sometimes you know very well what a sentence means but for a published translation you really can use some help in seeing how best to express it in English. This dictionary will give a great deal of that help.The one to compare with this is The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English Edition). It is only Chinese to English, and when you adjust for the different layouts it is very nearly the same length as the Chinese to English section of this. It has many fewer compound words and phrases, and many fewer study aids of the kind that Dowdell describes well in his review of this book. It has correspondingly more distinct characters. By comparing a couple of randomly chosen ranges it seems that The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English Edition) contains about 30% more distinct single characters than this Oxford dictionary (specifically I compared from cou4 to cun2, and again from qie1 to qin4, which both gave the same result). I cannot attempt any more subtle comparison of how the two dictionaries handle definitions.The dictionary comes with a free one year subscription to Oxford Language Dictionaries Online: Chinese. When you get past the bugs you find resources far less useful than are available free on line. There is, for example, a list of "useful phrases" such as "hello" and "what is your name?" If your Mandarin is at that level then there are infinitely many websites with more helpful phrases available free -- and you do not want this dictionary yet. There are pages of grammatical advice far less valuable than you can access free at Chinesepod. The Chinese look-up system is far less useful than the free dictionary (which even has handwritten character recognition) at Yellowbridge. If you are reading Chinese then you should get this dictionary. But Oxford Language Dictionaries Online is an utter waste of time as far as I can see.

I've been working with it a few hours each of the last three days, and so don't have a lot of experience, but from the time spent with this dictionary so far, I'm very impressed.It has a huge amount of vocabulary, with far more compound words than I've ever seen in a dictionary. For instance (if Amazon permits), ' sheng1 "alive" yields eight nine-inch columns of compounds, such as '' sheng1 wu4 "living thing", which itself has 28 further words such as '''' sheng1 wu4 hua4 xue2 "biochemistry", ''' sheng1 wu4 qu1 "bio-region", and ''''' sheng1 wu4 duo1 yuan2 hua4 "biological diversity". The red-covered Concise Oxford lists only four such further compounds.Many entries offer a significant number of contextual examples, showing how common words can be used as multiple parts of speech, or in multiple senses. Instead of just translating words, it often translates phrases, or even the intentions of utterances... the resources go much deeper than the number of entries alone.There are additional features, such as in-column call-out boxes for cultural topics, and multi-column spreads for larger topics like time or apologies... lists such as common Latin abbreviations used in Chinese text-messaging, and an incredible two-page map of kinship terms... multiple pages with searching strategies and tips, and a consolidated list of Chinese surnames. The "model form letters" sounded dry when I read about them, but became very useful when examined.And aside from linguistic features, it seems a very well-designed piece of information, with three columns per page... clear, uncluttered, and easy to read. The diagrams for "The Structure of Chinese-English Entries" and "The Structure of English-Chinese Entries" in the early part of the book are the quickest guide to seeing how much information is packed into a small, visually meaningful entry. It takes many of the visual innovations of 2000's "Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary" to a new level.Bringing together two great dictionary traditions into one state-of-the-art volume... maybe in a few months I'll get jaded, but right now this book seems very, very significant.[Update, Feb'11] I've been using this book daily the past few months, going back through old textbooks, looking up words where I have questions, reading various definitions and compounds, reading the example usages aloud... has given a strong second life to materials I already "know". Very valuable. (Yes, Pinyin is not always displayed in the examples, but these generally use higher-frequency characters anyway.)