Concise English-Chinese / Chinese-English Dictionary (Chinese Edition)

I bought this for my 8 year old daughter to help her with her Chinese lessons. She is at a big disadvantage being the only non-Chinese child in the class, and we've had to rely on the kindness of her teachers to assist her with her homework questions. This dictionary is such a big help for her. Not only does it have both the Chinese characters and the Pin-Yin, it has both Chinese to English and English to Chinese look ups. Now I can finally help her with her homework- and perhaps learn some Chinese myself!! Her Chinese teacher and the school directors thought this was a great dictionary for both adults and children.

If a larger print version comes out, I will buy it to keep here at home.

I found this book very useful in trying to translate some chinese words, while it does not reference proper names, it still is a helpful tool.

I found this book so useful I bought three, just to have spares. I didn't pay Amazon's price though; the same book is under $6 in China.

Regarding some of the other reviewers' complaint's:

Yes the print is tiny, and well-nigh illegible for the more complex characters, and the pages are very thin. That is the inevitable result of cramming large amounts of information into a small space. I do have to say, though, that it wasn't necessary to have printed the diacritics so small. The printing is crisp, however, under magnification and I recommend keeping a 1/2" fold-up magnifying glass in your pocket. Even at that, the thing is barely pocket size; I would have preferred a smaller number of broader pages so it were not so thick.

The definitions are not as authoritative as the best desktop dictionaries, but it is better than any other pocket or PDA-based dictionary I have found. For important situations, check your word with a reverse-lookup. That's life folks.

Chinese usage hints are in hanzi with no pinyin. I understand the need to conserve space, but if you have to choose one or the other, I think pinyin would have been better. Those experienced in Chinese can figure out which sense is being referred to, while those inexperienced in Chinese will need the pinyin to look up the words.

The radical index is immensely useful to look up characters by shape only, but a 4-corner index would be much more accessible to Chinese beginners. Including both might add 20 pages of heft, but would be worth it in my view.

Those last two issues (usage hints lack pinyin and no 4-corner index) make me say that this dictionary is not suitable for beginners. You have to have a few weeks of study and mastery of some basics in order to use it.

Having said that, I can offer no higher endorsement than to say that this dictionary is my linguistic side-arm whenever I go pounding the pavement in China. Not as good as the best dictionaries for European languages, but the best Chinese I have found, and my key to successful communication.

Beginners should start with an introductory phrase book and audio course, though. PDA owners, whose goals are less ambitious and who want to save space, might consider the MSDict PDA software, which appears to be built on the Pocket Oxford's lexicon. A better PDA dictionary, but not as good as this printed one, and less suited than MSDict for beginners, is Clavis Sinica.

Serious students will need a "real" desktop dictionary with more space to expound on usage and more terms of art.[...]

A very comprehensive dictionary, but you must have the patience to go over the many itterations in the hope of finding the English corollary. There is no English to Chinese and no special sections like "marrying/measuring" words. but the more I use it the more I realize that this is the most definitive Chinese dictionary for English speaking persons. I would prefer a little larger print, but it is bigger than some other dictionaries.

A high-quality book.
Just be sure to have your reading glasses or magnifying glass available!