Favorite Chinese-English Dictionary?

[stephanhodges]

Could you post the title, ISBN, and publisher of the reverse dictionary?

Also, several electronic dictionaries provide both "first", "last" and "anywhere" searches on a character. The one at mandarintools (DimSum) does this, for example.

[maxham]

I'm afraid I can't - I'm in China and my reverse dictionary is (unfortunately!) in Australia. I saw one a month or two back in a bookshop near BLCU so I'll pop down sometime and get the details for you.

I've never got into electronic dictionaries so I can't comment on that.

[Jose]

There was a recent thread about the reverse dictionary: http://chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=44634

[youpii]

My favorites Chinese-English dictionaries are:

- The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary, Chinese-English Edition, FLTR press

现代汉语词典 (already mentioned by Lu)

- A dictionary of Chinese usage: 8.000 words, BLCU press

汉语8000词词典

The latter contains very few english (only a short translation) but a lot of examples, measure words, synonyms, antonyms and also other common words using the same character. The 8.000 words (actually 8.800) are from the HSK vocabulary list. HSK level is also indicated for each word.

For measure words, I also use

量词一点通

The prompt understanding of measure words, BLCU press

Not exactly a dictionary but quite useful is:

HSK词汇讲练, BLCU press

it gives some details about similar words, for example 不论，不管 & 无论.

[pangxiongxiong]

A word of advice-don't waste your time with any of the Oxford dictionaries as the vocabulary is too limited, outdated and definitions are frequently wrong either for C-E or E-C.

For a Chinese-English book dictionary the best one is A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary (Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press, ISBN 7560025943). You can pick this up at Wanfujing bookstore in Beijing for 188rmb. Warning! It weighs about 5.5lbs!! Note that you will need to learn how to identify radicals in characters and use them for looking up words in this dictionary. This may be confusing at first but you must learn this early on in your studies if you are serious about learning Chinese.

A lighter (4.25 lbs) but more expensive ($43-59) Chinese-English book dictionary is the ABC Chinese-English Comprehesive Dictionary. Note that the 2003 version (ISBN 82482766X) is more comprehensive than earlier versions. Some mistakenly claim that this dictionary is easier for a beginner to use since you lookup words alphabetically using pinyin. The problem is that you must already know the pinyin for the character that you are looking for (this is an extremely unlikely scenario since you will likely only know the characters).

New World Press has an English-Chinese Pinyin Dictionary (ISBN 7800053830) which is fairly useful and lightweight (2lbs). You can find this at Wanfujing bookstore in Beijing for about 80rmb. My Chinese friends think many of the definitions are better than those found in the Oxford dictionaries.

The best pocket C-E/E-C dictionary is Pleco's Palm and Pocket PC software dictionary (http://www.pleco.com). This is the best equivalent to the pocket electronic dictionaries that so many Chinese use and actually has a larger vocabulary (includes Oxford, ABC and New World Press Pinyin dictionaries). This is far easier to use and lighter than lugging around a paper dictionary. Buy it! You won't regret it!

The most comprehensive C-E/E-C dictionary by far is Kingsoft's Powerword software dictionary for PC computers. Since Kingsoft is a Beida spin-off you can probably pick this up in Beijing for a fraction of the U.S. price (~$30-$50). The Overseas version and some of the newer versions have an English menu. If you have a laptop or desktop, this software will literally save hours in looking up words. Note that Kinbsoft recently released a Palm version of Powerword but I believe it only has a Chinese interface for now.

Hope this info helps and good luck with your studies!

[Kiwi Brazuca]

Does anyone have the new Kingsoft PowerWord 2006 version? If so, can you give us a review of it?

I have an opportunity to buy it relatively cheaply, for New Zealand. However, I found a Chinese-language site where some users had posted comments about PowerWord 2006. Unfortunately, I don't know enough Chinese to read these comments. So I used the Babelfish translator to get some idea of what they were saying. The automatic translator did well enough for me to realize that the comments were not compliments. For example, one user commented that Kingsoft should be known as a gangster software company.

But I would dearly like an English-language review by a user of the 2006 version. Please send only reviews of the 2006 version, because comments about other versions may not apply to the 2006 version.

Thanks,

[eokg62]

For advice on good Chinese-English dicitonaries, kindly refer to Greg Bosco's (dictionary fetishist) advice.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/1N3LSLSXZNXHN/ref=2/103-8095939-1363023

[roddy]

Greg used to post on here - if you do a search for user 'Yonglan' you'll find a fair amount of dictionary-related posts also. He does love his dictionaries . . .

[Lugubert]

For a Chinese-English book dictionary the best one is A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary (Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press, ISBN 7560025943). You can pick this up at Wanfujing bookstore in Beijing for 188rmb. Warning! It weighs about 5.5lbs!! Note that you will need to learn how to identify radicals in characters and use them for looking up words in this dictionary. This may be confusing at first but you must learn this early on in your studies if you are serious about learning Chinese.

But depending on your requirements, it might be a problem that it doesn't give the traditional characters (if I decipher my notes correctly). Otherwise, there is a big plus for the generous number of examples of usage.

Almost as good, and with trads, is A Chinese-English Dictionary (Revised Edition) from the same company, probably the parent of the "New". It's 7560007392, 128 rmb. Headword characters in pinyin order, radical lookup.

[David W Jackson]

Dalaowei hi

Quick question: is it possible to input English and output hanyu pinyin on the machine you mention? If so could you let me have the model number please? I've been in China for over 2 years and have yet to find a machine that will do this. Cheers. David

[eokg62]

Hi,

Does anyone know of any electronic dictionary that has The New Age Chinese-English Dictionary by Wu Jinrong & Cheng Zhenqiu, The Commercial Press, Beijing ISBN 7100027179 in software version???

Kindly reveal the name & model of the electronic dictionary & where to purchase it.

[student]

This

Hi,

Does anyone know of any electronic dictionary that has The New Age Chinese-English Dictionary by Wu Jinrong & Cheng Zhenqiu, The Commercial Press, Beijing ISBN 7100027179 in software version???

Kindly reveal the name & model of the electronic dictionary & where to purchase it.

is still a good question. Does anyone have an answer?

[mikelove]

For what it's worth, we made a very concerted effort to license the New Age dictionary for Pleco a few months ago and it proved completely impossible - even when we finally got through to the right person at Commercial Press our e-mails / calls / etc were basically ignored and we eventually gave up in frustration. So if that's any sign of how their licensing operation works I imagine it's unlikely you'll see an electronic version of New Age anytime soon.

[youpii]

mikelove, did you try to licence BLCU Press material ?

[mikelove]

Not recently, we did inquire about one of their titles a few years ago but that didn't work out. They were fine about communication, though, they just weren't interested in doing a license deal with us.