Rating: 
Summary: Not The Best and Not The Worst
Review: It seems so difficult to find a decent two-way Chinese-English dictionary (or even a one-way dictionary, for that matter) that I can understand why so many people prefer this book; it is better than almost all others. Even so, I often find it frustrating to use, and sometimes incorrect. Even if I find the word, there is not always a clear definition, explanation, or example. But as I said, it's better than most. There is one other two-way Chinese-English dictionary that I find very easy and useful, at least for a beginning learner of Chinese, and that is the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary. It is designed for the beginner, and it is the dictionary I most often use for my homework. Ultimately, it is the book one uses most often that is the best, isn't it?
Rating: 
Summary: Good - if you are a student, otherwise...
Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I am not studying Chinese at all. I am an ESL teacher who uses this dictionary in the classroom to help with my Chinese speaking students. I thought that it might be helpful to give you a different perspective on this dictionary. THE GOOD: 1) It is small. This makes it easy to carry around, and it doesn't take up a lot of space. 2) It has both English to Chinese and Chinese to English translations. (Believe it or not, some foreign language dictionaries only go one way!) 3) The entries contain all the things that you would expect from a foreign language dictionary: parts of speech, single or plural, transliterations etc. THE BAD: 1) It is a paper back book. This may not seem like much, but the covers start to show wear and tear relatively quickly. It also makes it so that you have to keep the book forced open while you are writing down definitions, and should you remove whatever you are using to keep it open it will slam shut rather quickly, forcing you to look up the same word twice! 2) The dialects. The dictionary uses British pronunciation through out (this is a good thing if you are in the U.K., but not so good if you anywhere else.) And I have not been able to find out which type of Chinese is used in the transliterations. It may be Mandarin, it may be Cantonese, or it may be neither. 3) The arrangement of words in the Chinese to English section seems very strange, not only to me but also to my Chinese students. A quote from the book says that it is "arranged in alphabetical order of pinyin romanization." It includes a table which tells you how to look up words according to the radical, number of strokes and pinyin alphabetical order. My Chinese speaking students hated this, and finally quite using the Chinese-English section all together. There seems to be a lot of praise for this dictionary. I imagine that if you are studying Chinese it is probably very helpful. But if you are not, then it may not be quite the right dictionary for you.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best but not that bad
Review: Personally I did not like this dictionary because it relies too much on pinyin and not enough on the actual characters. But I did like the fact that it did have a radical reference, since this is a really valuable resource. But the radical index needed to be bigger. As mentioned in other reviews there are mistakes and some of them are major mistakes. It could have been a lot better and if you are a serious chinese student you should probably ask a chinese professor to recommend a good dictionary, it will probably be more expensive than this one. On a side note, the characters in this book are the standard characters of the PRRC and it uses the Mandarin dialect, that means that it uses simplified characters. Those are the standard if you don't want the simplified characters it is probably a better idea to get a Tiwanese dictionary or a Cantonese dictionary, and not complain about this dictionary.
Rating: 
Summary: great dictionary on the PRC standard
Review: So far, I have found nearly everything I have tried to look up in this dictionary, and it offers a great number of usage examples. In fact, every phrase I was looking for turned out to be one of the examples :) The only problem I ran into is that the usage examples are only in Chinese, not Pinyin. In response to a previous review, this appears to be Mandarin based on both the pronounciation and usage, which is also good since I was expecting Mandarin. As for the "UK" pronounciation, well, that's not a big problem since the minor pronounciation differences between UK and USA English are not that serious. Granted there are a few usage differences, but those are also not very serious. The main focus of this dictionary is translating INTO Mandarin rather than from it. Oh, and the pinyin organization is by alphabet first, then by tone, so "A1" [first tone] comes before "A2" [second tone], etc. A little confusing, but easy to figure out after a while. If you are mainly translating FROM Pinyin however, get the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary by John DeFrancis.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a very good dictionary with only minor problems
Review: So far, I have found nearly everything I have tried to look up in this dictionary, and it offers a great number of usage examples. In fact, every phrase I was looking for turned out to be one of the examples :) The only problem I ran into is that the usage examples are only in Chinese, not Pinyin. In response to a previous review, this appears to be Mandarin based on both the pronounciation and usage, which is also good since I was expecting Mandarin. As for the "UK" pronounciation, well, that's not a big problem since the minor pronounciation differences between UK and USA English are not that serious. Granted there are a few usage differences, but those are also not very serious. The main focus of this dictionary is translating INTO Mandarin rather than from it. Oh, and the pinyin organization is by alphabet first, then by tone, so "A1" [first tone] comes before "A2" [second tone], etc. A little confusing, but easy to figure out after a while. If you are mainly translating FROM Pinyin however, get the ABC Chinese-English Dictionary by John DeFrancis.
Rating:
Summary: a Chinese/English standard for students
Review: The Oxford Second Edition is one of the better English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionaries on the market. It's a standard for students at most levels of Chinese or English language study and encompasses a broad selection of words and phrases from a variety of disciplines, including science, politics, language, and humanities as well as colloquialisms. Definitions of more common words and characters, though not exhaustive, give a fairly complete outline of meaning and usage. A user's and pronunciation guide pretext; also helpful is a radical index for Chinese characters. The English-Chinese section lists characters followed by pinyin, and the Chinese-English section is arranged alphabetically by pinyin. While characters appear in simplified script, the traditional character is (usually) provided. Some may find this dictionary slightly bulky, and true, it does not have the convenience of the pocket varieties. My friends and I did not find it burdensome during our study in China, however, and it does have the advantage of durable binding for students and travelers. My only reserve is the lack of proper nouns listed, especially places. Although there is a table of China's provinces and municipalities, this dictionary will not be helpful for other basic translations (ex. Pacific Ocean). Overall though, a necessary reference for students of both languages.
Rating:
Summary: a Chinese/English standard for students
Review: The Oxford Second Edition is one of the better English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionaries on the market. It's a standard for students at most levels of Chinese or English language study and encompasses a broad selection of words and phrases from a variety of disciplines, including science, politics, language, and humanities as well as colloquialisms. Definitions of more common words and characters, though not exhaustive, give a fairly complete outline of meaning and usage. A user's and pronunciation guide pretext; also helpful is a radical index for Chinese characters. The English-Chinese section lists characters followed by pinyin, and the Chinese-English section is arranged alphabetically by pinyin. While characters appear in simplified script, the traditional character is (usually) provided. Some may find this dictionary slightly bulky, and true, it does not have the convenience of the pocket varieties. My friends and I did not find it burdensome during our study in China, however, and it does have the advantage of durable binding for students and travelers. My only reserve is the lack of proper nouns listed, especially places. Although there is a table of China's provinces and municipalities, this dictionary will not be helpful for other basic translations (ex. Pacific Ocean). Overall though, a necessary reference for students of both languages.
Rating:
Summary: great dictionary on the PRC standard
Review: This dictionary makes it really easy to search for the Characters because it is in alphabetical order by pinyin. It also has the alternate pronunciations of the character listed after the definitions. One reader made the comment that it has the error of fa3 for hair, but this is not an error. The communist changed that pronunciation from Fa3 to fa4. ROC (Taiwan) standard is older. There are also some variant traditional characters used in ROC standard that are not in this dictionary, but written in another form, e.g. the word diao4, meaning to condole or to hang up. This dictionary doesn't have all of the scientific terms, but it is still pretty adequate for students.
Rating:
Summary: What a relief
Review: This is the best Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionary there is. The earlier edition of this book was simply too small. I suffered thru the early small size book using a magnifying glass for details of the written characters for 4 years before this one became available. No more magnifying glass!
Rating:
Summary: Best Chinese/English dictionary!!!
Review: This is the best Chinese/English dictionary out there. I've tried them all, and this is the easiest and most comprehensive to use, as a native English speaker. It's not as portable as the older edition, but luckily I have both, so I can use the small one on trips!
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