Review: Macmillan-FLTRP Chinese Character Dictionary + CD-ROM

[Gharial]

Review of: Macmillan-FLTRP Chinese Character Dictionary (汉语学习字典) + accompanying Character Practice CD-ROM. 968 pages, plus front matter (Foreword, ‘How to Use this Dictionary’, Indexes), and two short Appendices.


This dictionary was first published by FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing) in 2009, and then by Macmillan in 2010. Although Macmillan is based in Oxford in the UK, the 2010 edition is printed and bound in China, but is of very good quality: the card cover is glossy and looks reasonably durable, and the pages crisp and white (not quite bible-like, but still pretty thin!) and with rich, clear, good-sized font throughout. Sample pages (though slightly blurry when reduced to actual [100%] size in the pdf, compared to the very crisp and sharp real printed page) are available here: http://www.macmillan...e.aspx?id=52404 > http://www.macmillan...ry%20sample.pdf . (FWIW there are also a few page images available on Amazon, but these are VERY blurry). The dimensions of the book are about the same as e.g. McNaughton's Reading & Writing Chinese (Tuttle Publishing), but with a lot more pages and thus looking and feeling at least 50% thicker, but the thin pages mean the dictionary isn't at all heavy or inflexible to handle, and it stays open at whatever spread of two pages you want to consult without falling shut or stressing the spine.

This C-E (i.e. only one-way bilingual) dictionary has been designed for the foreign learner, and apparently contains around 3,000 of the more frequent and useful characters from the official List of Commonly Used Characters in Contemporary Chinese, plus around 32,000 words and expressions that cover the majority of the items in the Syllabus of Graded Words and Characters for Chinese Proficiency (as tested in the HSK exam, not that there is any explicit marking of HSK levels in the dictionary entries). Based on a quick comparison with the C-E half of the original Oxford/Commercial Press Concise two-way bilingual dictionary (精选英汉汉英词典), I’d estimate that the Concise probably has a good 20% more character entries, and perhaps 30% more compounds overall, but the Macmillan-FLTRP CCD (which I’ll from now on call the MFCCD) does nonetheless have some features (discussed below - see bolded key words and phrases) that could make it a contender still in the C-E dictionary marketplace (compared to say the somewhat similar, though traditional character-focussed, Far East 3000 Chinese Character Dictionary, which appears to lack example sentences, though the compounds it's selected seem pretty good: http://www.fareastbo...1&pic=12013 > http://www.fareastbo...0character3.htm ).

The MFCCD does however to my mind have one big drawback (certainly when compared to more comprehensively-indexed dictionaries like the aforementioned Oxford/CP Concise, or the ABC ECCE mentioned below and elsewhere): its index only allows the look-up of simplified characters, with the indexes’ bracketed traditional equivalents a mere afterthought that do little more than duplicate what can be seen (I hesitate to say found!) in the dictionary’s main entries. (One would’ve thought that something calling itself a ‘Chinese Character Dictionary’ would’ve aimed to be a bit more inclusive). Still, for those interested in studying only mainland materials for at least the first few years, perhaps the lack of traditional look-ups won’t be too much of a problem (though it is IMHO still a missed publishing opportunity), and most simplified dictionaries don’t allow the look up of traditional anyway, so the MFCCD is hardly alone in this respect.

The radical system used is essentially a simplified one, but unusual* in that the most frequent variant of a particular radical (which given a simplified character set will obviously be the most simplified variant!) is taken as the primary indexical form, so 刂 precedes and heads 刀 and ⺈ ; 亻 precedes and heads 人 and 入 ; 讠 precedes and heads (non-left) 言; 扌 precedes and heads 手; 氵 precedes and heads 水 and 氺 ; and so on. Note that the complex variants, and the characters they head, appear in subsections that are kept separate from the primary ones, rather than being lumped in with the primary ones a la the Kangxi system. So the MFCCD's system on the one hand brings semantically-related but graphically dissimilar radical forms much closer together than in other simplified dictionaries, yet its retaining separate subsections containing radico-graphically consistent characters makes zeroing in on particular items still very easy; the disadvantage however is the slightly increased look-up complexity, due to the need-to-follow-and-hopefully-sooner-or-later-start-to-remember redirects. Anyway, 士 is treated as a variant of 土, which could throw any mnemonics into disarray, but at least 玉 here is thankfully treated as a variant of 王 (rather than, as these latter two were/are treated in the Kangxi system, as the other way around). All the items in the radical chart and indeed the radical index are arranged and sub-arranged according to the initial and then recursive application of the strokes seen in the character 札 (i.e. the "zhá method"), with chart directs or redirects to the appropriate page of the index (so one is redirected from e.g. 言 on the chart to the ‘讠 followed by 言’ section and sub-section of the index); note however that I say 'to the appropriate page of the index', meaning that the primary radicals in the chart, and their sections in the index, are all unnumbered, which seems a shame (if like me you are of the opinion that assigning numbers could aid searching, if not actually learning the radicals too), and there is of course no reason that the MFCCD couldn't have supplied page directs as well as numbers (as this would've provided the best of both worlds). Another thing to note is that any radical whose less complex or simplified form is positionally no different from its more complex or traditional does not have the latter supplied in the radical chart, so this dictionary is completely simplified, to the extent that there is no longer even a radical-chart 馬 or 龍 etc to redirect from. There are however quite a few radicals included (some completely unnecessarily, IMHO, in that they are hardly productive, and could've easily been reassigned to/as parts of other radicals) that are drawn from the traditional rather than simplified inventory: 匕 干 无 支 牙 氏 (玉 > 王) 甘 生 癶 而 至 肉 色 非 隶 面 香 首 高 黄 鼓; then the MFCCD's radical chart also contains simplified 飞 长 齐 龟, and has a few "radical" items that are hard to electronically produce and show here (e.g. just the first two strokes of 反, or only the left side of 朝, which according to the first of the MFCCD's appendices, more details of which can be found below, are unsurprisingly called 反字旁 and 朝字旁 respectively). Anyway, from a quick count there are 190 primary radicals in the MFCCD's scheme. The system overall is thus similar to the Unified 201-radical scheme, but with a consistent emphasis on the simplified or less-complex items. It shouldn't be too difficult then for any learner who invests time in becoming familiar with this 190-item system to adapt to any other radical system (such as the CASS simplified 189, the traditional Kangxi 214, or indeed the helpful Comprehensive hybrid chart/look-up option provided in later ABC dictionaries such as the ECCE).

When one has in the index found the character that one is looking up, one is again directed to a page number to get to the entry in the dictionary rather than being immediately given the general syllable-tone in Pinyin, but whilst page numbers may be a good thing to give for more quickly "zeroing in" in a dictionary such as the Xinhua (which contains around 12,000 characters and thus quite large syllable-tone sections spread over pages and pages), surely immediate Pinyin would’ve been the better thing to give in a relatively small dictionary like the MFCCD.

The MFCCD also contains a somewhat superfluous ‘Phonetic Index’ (basically a 24-page listing of each character alongside its Pinyin syllable, in Pinyin alphabetical order), and two useful appendices: 1) a 3-page chart giving the names of the more common radicals (but rather unhelpfully in hanzi only, especially if you are a beginner!), their stroke orders (but in nice clear basic black-stroke-on-blank-white-paper-background stroke by stroke build-up, rather than the slightly fuzzy and unclear black-stroke-filling-in-whole-red-character-template diagrams in the dictionary's entries - see the next paragraph), and examples of them positioned in characters, and 2) a single page detailing the basic rules of stroke order, each rule with an example character and an accompanying stroke-order breakdown (but again in very clear black stroke build-up against the white of the page). In 1), “Some radicals such as 山 马 日 月 厂 are not included, as these characters are separate words” (fair enough I suppose, in order to keep the chart within reasonable lengths), whilst some of the “most frequently used names” for the remaining radicals sometimes conflict with guidance given in other sources (e.g. I haven’t seen 亠 called 六字头 before, but rather, only 文字头). Overall though these are valuable appendices to have in a learner dictionary.

As you can see from the above Macmillan pdf, a particular feature of the MFCCD is that it provides stroke-order guidance (in the form of stroke-by-stroke diagrams) for each and every simplified head character, with the stroke orders animated on the accompanying CD-ROM (more details of that later). As mentioned in the preceding paragraph however, the style of the dictionary's diagrams should perhaps have been a little more basic than so "colourful". Traditional variants meanwhile are given in brackets (and their number limited - for example, only 裏 , but not 裡 , is given at the entry for 里**), but these unfortunately have no stroke-orders provided for them***. The total number of strokes and the appropriate/standardly-chosen radical are also stated in each character entry, and at the beginning of each stroke-order sequence there is an initial small diagram showing the division of the character into radical and residue, though this latter feature again seems a little superfluous and is sometimes (though only very occasionally) awry or plain wrong: for example, in the character entry for 危 wēi, the lower-right portion is what's sub-squared, despite the stated radical being the ⺈ on top, while in 威 (which is also pronounced wēi), the 一 plus 女 part is what's sub-squared, despite the stated radical being 戈 .

A nice touch is the running header at the top-right edge of each page (like a cross between an English dictionary's alphabetical header, and the index to a Rolodex), which shows which characters are listed on that page, along with the range of Pinyin syllables involved. This could save having to scan the actual page itself, but as the number of entries on each page is usually quite small (or rather, the flip side of that coin is that the entries are often quite long and reasonably detailed, which can only be a good thing!), it remains to be seen whether this feature will in fact be utilized that much by users. (But like I say, it is a nice touch nevertheless!). It’s just a shame that the radical index doesn’t have something similar (like in the ABC C-E Comprehensive and ABC ECCE dictionaries), as that would save having to consult the radical chart as much, but then, at least there are (as has already been mentioned) 'directs' in the form of (page) numbers that direct you from the radical chart to the appropriate page of the radical index, to help speed things up.

Another useful feature of the paper dictionary is that it provides examples or lists (sometimes quite extensive - see the first sense given for 然 rán on page 1 of the pdf, and the ...人 items on page 6) of compounds in which the head-entry character isn't initial (but one will need to refer to head characters elsewhere in the dictionary for anything more than the Pinyin pronunciation for such compounds, as that is all that is given for these non-initial compounds); these are printed in the standard black font, whilst compounds that are actually headed by the head-entry character, and thus the "proper" focus of the entry overall, are highlighted in red font and given first. The book could thus also serve as a modest reverse-order dictionary (and is much much better in this regard than e.g. Harbaugh's Chinese Characters, which doesn't even supply any Pinyin right alongside its listings of non-inititials, but isn't organized and ordered throughout by Pinyin anyhow! (Harbaugh employs innovative grapheme-based genealogical trees, yet that all would really need its own separate review...)). One particularly important thing to note is that each block of compounds, whether in red or black font, is primarily ordered according to the number of characters in each compound, and that the compound alphabetical ordering is thus only a sub-ordering; this is of course not standard in dictionaries and thus an "innovation" of a sort, but it makes sense in a way. Note also that the compounds in the MFCCD are each assigned to particular meaning-senses/numbered subentries of the individual head-character, and thus break up and come between those numbered subentries, rather than (as in the Oxford/CP Concise) being listed as a continuous whole block following an initial listing of all the head-character's meanings grouped together; the MFCCD's format may therefore be better to some learners for more thorough, considered, leisurely learning, but the Concise's format is almost definitely the better for quick spur-of-the-moment access to certainly the compounds. Anyway, it is interesting to compare the MFCCD's treatment of compounds with the Far East 3000 Chinese Character Dictionary's (again, see the htm link at the end of the second paragraph). Also included in the MFCCD are antonyms for adjectives (see for example the mention of 冷 lěng at the start of the first sense given for 热 rè on page 4 of the Macmillan pdf).

Furthermore, besides all the compounds, every word, phrase and example sentence also has full Pinyin supplied (though without tone sandhi changes, i.e. the tones indicated have remained the canonical ones); the transcriptions apparently all follow the 'Basic Rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography' (see http://pinyin.info/r.../zyg/rules.html , or the appendix included in the main range of ABC dictionaries). Parts of speech labels however are only given in Chinese characters, but as there are only fourteen labels used these shouldn't take long for the average learner to memorize. Definitions for single-character entries meanwhile are given in not only English but Chinese characters also (which will be of interest and quite helpful to any learners thinking of at some point switching to native-speaker, Chinese-only dictionaries, and/or of expanding their powers of paraphrasing). "Bound-form" information is limited to the usual suspects such as 蝴 蝶. The example sentences look generally no better or worse than those in most other dictionaries, but I did start wondering about one that for some reason caught my eye (磕 kē, sense 2: knock sth out of a vessel; knock out; rap. 请把烟灰磕在烟灰缸里。Qǐng bǎ yānhuī kē zài yānhuīgāng li. Please tap your ash into the ashtray). Wouldn't just something like 请用烟灰缸 be more natural, and less pedantic/potentially confrontational, albeit less "clear" and "instructive" pedagogically if not lexicographically? Then, there was the rather clunky and unidiomatic-sounding (indeed, quite hard to process!) English translation given to one of the two example sentences for sense 11 ('expressing possibility') of 会 huì: 我想他不会不懂。Wǒ xiǎng tā bù huì bù dǒng. I don't think he may not understand it. (I'd translate that as something like "I doubt/don't think he'll/he is likely to misunderstand it" or "I'm sure he won't misunderstand it"). Again, note the lack of tone sandhi indications/the retaining of canonical tones in the MFCCD.

Anyway, this is overall still a solid-looking dictionary, but the amount of information contained is ultimately not as much as in dictionaries like the Oxford/CP Concise or the CCD3, let alone the ABC ECCE, plus all those dictionaries have the very large advantage of being bilingual in not only the C-E but also the E-C direction; then, it should of course go without saying that certainly the beginner to pre-intermediate learner will often be better served by "basic" but pretty detailed and very helpful two-way bilingual dictionaries such as the Oxford Beginner’s Chinese Dictionary. Personally, if I really wanted a dedicated "character dictionary" (i.e. a reasonably comprehensive cidian but with plenty of characters listed in it), I'd consider either or both the Far East C-E Dictionary (远东汉英大辞典) or the ABC C-E Comprehensive before the MFCCD, though again, the ABC ECCE is excellent value and usually more than enough for most character reference purposes (plus it and the ABC C-E Comprehensive allow one to look up simplified characters as well as traditional, whereas the Far East is the opposite of the MFCCD, in that it only allows you to look up traditional, but this is really only to be expected, given that the Far East is published in Taiwan).

Now, on to the MFCCD's CD-ROM (be warned that this is the point at which the review turns from generally positive to unrelentingly negative! NB: Apologies for all the IIRCs in the following, but my computer's CD drive has suddenly decided to go on the blink, which means I am unable to re-insert the CD-ROM at the moment to check a few points! I’ll try to get access to another computer ASAP, and edit my comments if necessary).

I was assuming that the CD-ROM would duplicate the contents of the paper dictionary and then some (like the CD-ROMs that accompany advanced English learner dictionaries, one of which, the MED, is published by Macmillan), and provide audio recordings for all the compounds, phrases, and example sentences, but all it includes are stroke-order animations (which you access by searching for a character by either Pinyin or IIRC radical also), with audio for just those single characters in isolation (though there is optional stroke-by-stroke audio commentary, e.g. 十 would be given as the stroke names "héng, shù" i.e. 横, 竖), which ultimately just repeats the diagrams in the book (albeit more clearly and snazzily). Then, there are some simple poems that provide a bit of (IIRC silent) reading practice, with any of the poems’ vocabulary that’s not in the MFCCD supplied in short supplementary lists alongside the poems.

So the content of the MFCCD’s CD-ROM is very sparse (though I will admit that I know little of the technical aspects and demands of stroke-order animations - perhaps they take up so much disc space that there is none left for what would IMHO be far more useful replication of the WHOLE dictionary in this fully-searchable electronic format, with audio of all the compounds and example sentences...but then, why not just include two CD-ROMs?), and IMHO very bad value considering the price of the book + CD-ROM package (luckily I got mine cheaply second-hand). One ultimately wonders why anybody actually needs a disc containing simplified stroke animations, considering how many are freely available online (see e.g. nciku for starters!).

As for the disc's functionality, the few functions that it has are badly designed: the stroke-order animations' speed control (whose default speed is "agonizingly" slow) is only provided in the IIRC ‘My Characters’ compartment/screen (that you save chosen characters to), not in the main screen (although resetting the speed in the 'My characters' screen will thankfully keep it at that speed when you then switch back to the main screen), and I was completely unable to find where characters with more than one pronunciation had their alternative pronunciations indicated or supplied (this is apparently a feature included somewhere).

Another irritating thing (and unrelated to my malfunctioning CD drive, though it’s how I discovered the drive's fault today, after installing the CD-ROM fully yesterday and having the program functioning fine) is that you will be prompted to re-insert the disc whenever you next go to open the program, despite having completely installed it to your desktop. Accustomed as I am to CD-ROMs that either do not ever need re-inserting, or at most only once every month or so and then simply for re-authentication purposes, to have to re-insert the disc every single time could get a bit wearing in every sense.

In conclusion then, this dictionary (certainly, the paper book) could well be a first choice for many going-on intermediate learners (or learners commencing the study of Chinese characters and writing in earnest), combining as it does all the advantages of a pretty good dictionary (though any subsequent edition could IMHO do with at least including traditional character look-ups in the index, if not incorporating most if not all the little recommendations made above) with all the advantages of a stroke-order manual, so it is in effect two books in one. The disappointing CD-ROM however makes me question the value of the package overall, and until the CD-ROM is substantially expanded and improved, I cannot see how the western RRP (or near, higher-end book-dealer prices) can be justified - one could simply buy two or more good alternatives (e.g. the ABC ECCE for its dictionaries plural, and the McNaughton for its stroke orders) for roughly the same sum of money.

Yet despite any negative rating the CD-ROM receives, it is unlikely that anyone would want to buy the book minus the CD, and even assuming that were possible, the presumably quite low costs involved in producing such a seemingly basic CD-ROM would probably not shave that much (i.e. enough) off the price of the book alone anyway. Either way, it would seem that “quality” Chinese materials are becoming as "expensive" nowadays as many ELT materials have always been, but this isn’t that surprising in this case, given that a “true” ELT publisher is involved here. (All that being said, the MED, at least in its first edition, was a great dictionary, with a very good CD-ROM, so it’s a shame that a similar level of expertise and apparent care couldn’t have been brought to bear in this Chinese venture).

More book reviews here: http://www.chinese-f...__fromsearch__1

*Previous dictionaries' simplified systems, pretty much all of which can be traced back to the CASS 189-radical scheme (details of which are here: http://www.chinese-f...__fromsearch__1 ), are usually quite non-committal regarding which forms should be primary, and thus assign many so-called "similar" (though positionally very different) radicals their very own entry according to their actual number and type of strokes, meaning that one more often than not searches for the radical one has actually seen, rather than needing to remember or follow redirects to (too m)any so-called primary forms. But the MFCCD's radical chart is well-designed and has few errors (the only one I've spotted is its putting a 'variant' symbol, which is basically an upwards-pointing triangle /\ , before 卜 ( |- )), and is certainly better IMHO than the traditional Kangxi system (in which the memory- and time-burden is higher due to the traditional primary forms having more rather than fewer strokes (compared to simplified primary forms, obviously)).

**But at least this dictionary gets the distinction right between the original use of a character and its later use as a simplifying sound loan, so it makes it very clear (by means of a black-circled 2 and 3) that 裏 only applies to the 2nd and 3rd 'lining' and 'in/inside' meanings of 裏/里, and not to 里 itself's original meaning of 'a measure of distance approximately equal to 0.5km'.

***Sometimes you "get lucky" though, in that a phonetic component that has been simplified may have a traditional counterpart, and hopefully nearby - see for example 让 ràng, versus 壤 and 嚷 (both rǎng) on page 2 of the Macmillan pdf. That, or you learn to use your initiative and look for characters or components with similar stroke orders to the traditional ones you've been pondering!

[jkhsu]

Off topic: This is for the admins or OP. There is a horizontal line in this post that extends out to the latest posts section on the main site. On an iPad, this line prevents users from clicking on a latest post.

[Gharial]

I've removed the offending line. Sorry about that, jkhsu! And please say if what I've done hasn't rectified the situation.

[jkhsu]

Yes, it's fixed! Admins: Feel free to remove my posts.

[Gharial]

Mine too. (But not the review, please! ).