Rating: 
Summary: Useless
Review: After spending several months using this dictionary as an aid to learning Mandarin, my Chinese friends who speak Beijing Mandarin (Pudonghua) have recommended that I throw it away. According to the them, the English to Chinese dictionary is so inaccurate that they were able to open it to any page and within seconds, find incorrect translations of English words. Quite frustrating to have wasted so much time learning to speak Mandarin incorrectly.
Rating: 
Summary: The very best Chinese dictionary for English speakers.
Review: After struggling with the miniscule type in the first edition, it's a joy to use the second edition with its extensive revisions and much larger type. This is the only dictionary that allows you to look up Chinese words by their pinyin spelling and to look up English words and find their pinyin and Chinese character equivalent. If you are studying Chinese this book is an absolute must. If you are traveling and want a pocket-sized dictionary, get the first edition otherwise you'll be a lot happier with the second edition.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Resource
Review: As a Chinese language learner for 20 years and as a college teacher of Chinese for five, I have found this dictionary to be invaluable. It has many important features not found in most other dictionaries, not the least of which is that it has C/E and E/C sections in the same book. One previous reviewer said his Chinese friends found mistakes. Welcome to language learning! No dictionary can possibly handle all the subtleties resident in language translation, especially between English and Chinese since both languages are spoken by an enormous variety of speakers (usage varies widely from one region to another). Having the ability to cross check (ie look up a word on one side and take the translation to the other side and see if it comes back the same as you started) is the only way to be sure you're using a word properly. The pinyin with each Chinese word in the E/C allows that very easily. I own 5 copies of the first edition, one for every room and my brief case, and all are worn to the spine. While not as portable as the smaller first edition, this present edition was more warmly welcomed by my students (and my own eyes!) for the larger characters. Also useful when you get a little farther along are the multitude of example sentences and phrases included. I own probably 20 dictionaries of various types and flavors, and this one is not the only dictionary a serious language learner should own, but it should be the first.
Rating: 
Summary: Good solid dictionary
Review: As a new student of chinese, this dictionary has served me very well. The C-E section is organized in a non-obvious way to somebody new to the language, and there is no explanation of it in the beginning, but I figured it out. I do find it odd that you can't look up a character without knowing how it's pronounced, but I guess that's normal in dictionaries these days. Smaller type in the paperback would be nice since it's far too large to travel with now. Overall it's a good work though.
Rating:
Summary: Concise and Manageable
Review: As concise dictionaries go this offering from Oxford is my cup of tea. I have two huge dictionaries: C-E and E-C but when I want to look up a word I always turn to this one first. It does not pretend to have everything, but nine times out of ten it has what I am looking for. The first half of the dictionary is English to Chinese with the second half reversing that. The E-C section has the English word followed by the Chinese equivalent (if there is such a thing :) in characters, followed by the pinyin. For common words it also includes variations and short examples. This seems to be somewhat inconsistently done in terms of the amount of English included and/or pinyin. It assumes that the reader has at least a minimal grasp of Chinese. If they do not what are the expecting from a dictionary? Language cannot be equated word for word. You must study it in its cultural context. The second half of the dictionary is arranged alphabetically by pinyin, tone and radical. In other words if you knew rice/meal was "fan" you would look up "fan" and then find the fourth tone section and then the character for rice. If you do not know the tone (always a challenge) or the character (a bigger challenge) it gets a little harder. Chinese is not a language designed for dictionaries. As with most Chinese dictionaries it is almost impossible for a non-native speaker to look up a character to find its meaning. It is an involved process of figuring out which stroke was first and how many there are and whether or not the character is single or combined with others. The radical index is well laid out and I have seen a Chinese locate a character in seven seconds with little problem. Anyone using this dictionary should already know that however, so I do not count it against the dictionary. For the benefit of those who might buy this dictionary let me say what it is not. It is not an exhaustive dictionary. It is not designed as a textbook for learning new words. It is not a phrasebook for tourists. It also assumes that you know enough Chinese to tell the difference between shi (ten) and shi (rock). If you fit this description and are looking for a concise dictionary for everyday use I would not hesitate to recommend this one.
Rating:
Summary: What happened to the small format?
Review: Content-wise, this is a good dictionary for everyday use by learners of Chinese. It might not be the dictionary of choice for reading newspapers or Chinese literature, but it's perfect for basic conversational Chinese and most day-to-day use. So why did Oxford make the 2nd edtion so big? The 1st edition was a terrific little dictionary-- small enough to carry to class or in your bag while travelling, and it fit very comfortably in one's hand, yet it was surprisingly comprehensive. Granted, the type was small, but I was quite willing to make that compromise for such convenience. The new 2nd edition is much larger-- not as large as a normal full-sized dictionary, but way too big and heavy to comfortably carry to class or on trips to China, and it simply doesn't fit as well in my hand as the 1st edition. Therefore, it isn't nearly as useful as the amazing 1st edition. For my money, I would have much prefered Oxford to correct the typos in the 1st edition, and perhaps update the entries a bit (adding names of countries would be nice)... but I wish they hadn't messed with the size! I am very disappointed in the 2nd edition. I will use it at my desk, but I am taking very good care of my well-worn 1st edition for use when I need something more portable.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensable for serious students of Chinese
Review: Despite the growing popularity of the Chinese language, there are still relatively few tools on the market for learning it (compared to the number of books in print for learning Spanish, French, etc.) Given this situation, this dictionary will answer two key needs faced by every student of the Chinese language: -Despite its classification as a dictionary, this book is perfect for students who need to memorize the Chinese characters needed for core competency in the language. Each word/character entry is presented in simplified form, along with its traditional equivalent. (I use this dictionary myself as a study tool to maintain my grasp of Chinese characters.) -Although you probably won't memorize every word in the Chinese-English section of this dictionary, it is useful for intermediate students who are trying to expand their vocabulary. The author has effectively chosen a wide variety of Chinese words without inserting too many obscure examples. The English-Chinese section of the book is also very complete. You will find an accurate Chinese translation of almost any word common to the vocabulary of an adult English-speaker. (Review by Edward Trimnell, author of "Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One," (ISBN:1591133343))
Rating:
Summary: Excellent guide for use of chinese character combinations
Review: Enjoyed using this latest edition for personal study using the easy to use (and see) radical index for looking up characters. Many characters are used in combination to form words and word groups. This dictionary makes it easy to formulate your own sentences (if you have a basic knowledge of Chinese grammar) with suggestions in the English-Chinese and Chinese-English sections. Used in combination with Understanding Chinese, I can communicate in writing or speech and feel fairly confident that I'm speaking and writing as well as someone receiving formal instruction (instead of the self-taught student that I am). Great dictionary!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, easy to use reference for students of Chinese
Review: I am a teacher of Mandarin Chinese and this is the dictionary I recommend to all my students. The book uses pinyin romanization which is standard in most Chinese language classes in the US today. When a character is written in its simplified form, the traditional form is also shown - a feature hard to find in many Chinese dictionaries. Definitions are followed by the word used in a simple phrase or sentence. The English-Chinese, Chinese-English format makes it convenient for students to cross-reference words. A radical index in the center of the dictionary enables you to look up a word if you only know what a character looks like but you don't know how to pronounce it. (However you do need to know how to identify all the radicals first). The book is relatively small and easy to carry (unless you are one of those unfortunate students who have to lug a twenty-pound backpack to school each day). Best of all for those with fading eyesight like myself, the print is large enough so that you don't need to dig out your magnifying glass each time you need to look up a word.
Rating:
Summary: Lone student
Review: I am currently an English teacher in China attempting to study Chinese. I have found this dictionary to be fantastic largely due to the fact that there is lots of pinyin, all of the hanying dictionaries that I can buy here have very little pinyin and so have made me realise how important it is. The Chinese-English half of the dictionary has the characters arranged in alphabetical order according to the pinyin, then each character has a list of words (two characters or more) with the pinyin for all of the characters in the word. The only reason that I wouldnt give this dictionary five stars is that the usage examples in the definitions dont have pinyin with them so if you dont know one character/word you have to go back to the stroke counting section to look it up to get the whole meaning, although having the pinyin would make the dictionary excessively bulky, so that is a trade off. I find the dictionary a good size so I can take it along when backpacking to continue studying but also big enough that it covers all the words that I have come across in my studies so far (up to PCR4). Enjoy your study.
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