What is the best comprehensive Chinese dictionary?

[gao_bo_han]

Hi all!

This is my first time posting on here, but I've been reading through the forum and found it to be very useful and interesting. Perhaps you guys can help me.

I have narrowed down my search for the most comprehensive Chinese to English dictionary around to the new ABC Comprehensive Dictionary, edited by John Defrancis and the new Chinese to English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press.

My first question is this: Does the Chinese to English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press contain both simplified and traditional characters? and my second question is: Does it also have documentation/explanations of characters and usage in English?

If anyone has any experience with this dictionary I would really appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks all,

Bo Han

[nnt]

Hi all!

This is my first time posting on here' date=' but I've been reading through the forum and found it to be very useful and interesting. Perhaps you guys can help me.

I have narrowed down my search for the most comprehensive Chinese to English dictionary around to the new ABC Comprehensive Dictionary, edited by John Defrancis and the new Chinese to English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press.

My first question is this: Does the Chinese to English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press contain both simplified and traditional characters? and my second question is: Does it also have documentation/explanations of characters and usage in English?

If anyone has any experience with this dictionary I would really appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks all,

Bo Han[/quote']

I use the Chinese to English Dictionary by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press (1993 edition , and I think it is one of the most comprehensive existing Chinese-English dictionary. Its 3 indexes (pinyin, radicals, strokes' number) contain both traditional and simplified characters, and it clearly points out in which cases the exact traditional character equivalent is.

It is one of the best, even though one can always find an expression not included in the dictionary (perhaps the are more recent edition than the one I have)

[Guest Yinyue Mike]

If this Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. Press dictionary is the one I'm thinking of (two volumes?) it is a very good dictionary, but I might have to vote for the DeFrances dictionary. The new comprehensive dictionary has a huge number of entries (180,000 or something) and the layout makes it easily the fastest way to look up a word for an English speaker -- especially in listening if you're not sure which character it is under. It has the traditional characters in the back as well as under the single character entries (but be careful--it only includes those characters that occur in isolation, it's truly a "word" dictionary, not a character dictionary as well). The former dictionary seemed to have a good number of Chinese government organization names, etc., and does give the meaning of each characters regardless of usage. I seem to remember that both dictionaries just use simplified characters in the main body but both reference traditional characters in the back. I may be confusing the first dictionary, though! Hope this helps!

Mike

百毅敏

[kentsuarez]

I seem to remember that both dictionaries just use simplified characters in the main body but both reference traditional characters in the back. I may be confusing the first dictionary, though!

The new ABC Comprehensive has traditional characters not only in the rear index and at single character entries, but also at compounds, so that unlike the original ABC, you can now tell which fu4 is in chong2fu4 (versus the one in hui1fu4). Very nice, highly recommended book.

[Mark Yong]

The dictionary that I have been using for the past 15 years or so has been "Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary". Admittedly, since the last edition was more than 50 years ago, this dictionary is a bit outdated in terms of the Romanisation (it uses the Wades-Giles system) and word usage. But having said that, I would like to point out its merits:

1. This dictionary has the largest repository of characters in any Chinese-English dictionary that I have come across (more than 7,500) to date. The next one down is the Far-East Chinese-English Dictionary at slightly over 7,300.

2. Being an old dictionary, it has a very wide selection of word usages in Classical/Literary Chinese, that is not found in many of the modern dictionaries.

3. It also provides alternate and archaic forms of characters.

These features suit me very well, as my interest is mainly in Literary Chinese, and not modern Mandarin.

Cheers,

Mark

[HashiriKata]

My best is New Age Chinese-English Dictionary (新时代汉英大词典) by The Commercial Press. It's a one-volume dictionary (read: handy) but still fairly comprehensive (120.000 entries), with a new updated edition coming out at regular intervals. Definitions are succint, clear, easy to read and often accompanied by illustrated examples. I've been using it for nearly a year now and don't have any complaint worth reporting.

I've never used the new ABC Comprehensive by DeFrances. I'm very impressed by the reported large number of entries (over 180.000) but wonder how they fit into such a small volume (smaller than my New Age above). Since DeFrances' entries are repeated (for example: the word 时代 would appear both under 时 and 代; and if a word has 4 字, it would be listed 4 times). Can any user of this ABC Dictionary please confirm that the large number of entries is due to the counting of repeated entries ? I just want to be sure if the number of entries is indeed as large as it sounds.

[Lugubert]

I'm just a beginner, but for my needs (mainland Mandarin, now at 3rd semester) I'm very happy with the 1400+ large pages of 汉英词典 from 外语教学与硏穷出版社 recommended at my university. It's searchable for simplified as well as for traditional (and the hard-to-identify table), arranged according to pinyin, and has a fair amount of examples, some literary, some too political. RRP 128 yuan; I paid of course some 3 to 4 times that price in Sweden, but don't complain. And I'm extra fond of dictionaries that include a table of the chemical elements. OTOH, an admirable feature of Mathews is that you find two-syllable words under their second character. I also own A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary from The Far East Book Co., Ltd. It's traditional, with radical + stroke arrangement, Bopomofo and Wade lookup, but seldom have to use it. The Sisu Concise Chinese-English Dictionary (Sisu = Shanghai International Studies University) of almost 900 (small) pages is not bad at all (RRP 19 yuan), pinyin arangement, radical + stroke but no difficult, stroke-only table, and it's too often too small for 3rd semester studies.

The Wenlin SW, incorporating the ABC, is fast if you work on an electric text and/or are familiar enough with stroke order to use the writing pad, but there's the computer + SW cost (SW at some USD 150, I think), and you can't carry it all with you in a bag. If you go for it, get a legal copy so that you can upgrade to v. 3.2.2, otherwise, the translation window is too small and not expandable.

[bookdance]

Some years ago (ca. 2015) A Student‘s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese by Paul W. Kroll was published. It is now considered a new standard and may take the place of Mathews, as it

 

- offers around 8.000 characters

- and is listed in pinyin order. 

 

Watch out, though, to get the revised (2nd) edition, as the first one seemed to have unsatisfying entries as for Medieval Chinese. 

 

Being a bookloving beginner of Classical Chinese I ordered both, Mathews with its beautiful silky paper just arrived this morning, Kroll will be delivered later in the day. 

 

I can‘t say how a dictionary app will change the necessity for these tomes. 

 

But I wanted to share the arrival of an equivalent dictionary for newcomers to this thread.