Berlitz Pocket Dictionary Chinese-English English-Chinese (Berlitz Mass Market Dictionaries)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent value with easy-to-read fonts
Review: This compact paperback is the best value simplified Chinese-English dictionary that I have found. It has 40,000 entries, which covers most words in everyday use.

The English-Chinese section has the pinyin transliteration for each word. (Pinyin is the Romanized written version of Chinese that uses accents to indicate the correct tones). Where a word can have a different translation depending on the context, this is clearly indicated.

The Chinese-English section is ordered alphabetically, English-style, according to its pinyin pronunciation. There is a list of radicals at the front of the book for when you don't know the correct mainland Mandarin pronunciation.

Very importantly for a portable dictionary, the paper is high quality and the fonts are large and clear enough not to be unreasonably eye-straining. There is also a short list of common Taiwanese equivalents to Mandarin Chinese, spelled in pinyin and traditional Chinese.