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Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary | 
| Creators: Zhu Yuan, Wang Liangbi, Ren Yongchang
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $12.21
You Save: $5.74 (32%)
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 46463
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 632
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.2 x 1.9
ISBN: 0195968336
Dewey Decimal Number: 495.1321
EAN: 9780195968330
Publication Date: May 20, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
An essential reference both for English-speakers learning Chinese and Chinese-speakers learning English, this brand new edition of the Pocket Chinese Dictionary offers authoritative, up-to-the-minute coverage, with over 88,000 words and phrases, and 130,000 translations, in a compact and practical format.
This brand new edition has been updated to include the very latest vocabulary, including bioterrorism, e-shopping, WAP phone, domain name, and SARS.
The dictionary's clear layout makes it accessible and straightforward to use, and a detailed index system of radicals helps you find the entry you need quickly and easily. Chinese simplified characters, orthodox characters, and pinyin forms are given for each entry. Entries are ordered alphabetically according to their pinyin romanization, and coverage of Mandarin tones is included.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Not for beginners September 2, 2005
35 out of 41 found this review helpful
I recently bought the Oxford Chinese dictionary (2003 edition) and although I've only had it for a few days, it has already annoyed me sufficiently that I felt impelled to write a review here.
1.
Printed Dictionary Comprehensiveness:
Having searched the Chinese-English section exhaustively for yi4qi3 (meaning `together') I had to admit defeat. It's in the English-Chinese section but I haven't been able to find it in the Chinese-English section. I read every entry under `yi' but didn't locate it. Considering that this was the first Chinese word I attempted to look up, my confidence in this dictionary was shaky from the beginning. I might have a fourth try later on to make sure I didn't miss it.
2.
CDROM Sound Quality:
The CDROM application has a facility whereby Chinese words are spoken for you, which would be useful if you were unsure as to the sound of a word. However, the sound quality is terrible. It's like trying to make out what someone is saying at the other end of a telephone, instead of the clarity you would expect (and for a beginner, need). It should not have been difficult to supply accurate, CD-quality sound, and I have no idea why the authors didn't do this.
3.
CDROM dictionary comprehensiveness:
Don't expect much from the CDROM in general. Again, I couldn't find "yi4qi3" (I used an asterisk in place of tone marks, instructing the dictionary to return all matches regardless of tone). I also tried entering the simplified Chinese characters but again, it did not show "together" under any of its definitions. The CDROM application itself is written in Java and don't expect the polished look-and-feel that you might from other Windows programs. When I attempted to look up "together" (using the English word), again yi4qi3 was nowhere to be found.
4.
Pinyin provision:
Most examples of the uses of words in the printed dictionary are written only in simplified Chinese, and not in pinyin. This is particularly true of the Chinese-English section. This makes the dictionary far less useful for someone beginning to learn the language, as you will most likely have to look up each word in the Chinese examples, making them next to useless unless you're the masochistic type. The claim at the back of the dictionary that "Pinyin romanization and Mandarin pronunciation [are] shown throughout" is only a half-truth at best. The number of examples given is far smaller than those given in Oxford's Starter Chinese Dictionary, although I can understand the need for this as this dictionary has so many more definitions.
5.
Radical Index:
A minor point of note is the radical index, given at the beginning of the Chinese-English section. The only English you will find in this section is the words "Radical Index." Stroke counts are given using Chinese characters, and while this is not a huge inconvenience for someone who is aware of these characters, it does present a problem to newcomers to the language. As far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense for the dictionary to be formatted in this way. After all, many people will be consulting the Chinese-English section because they do not _know_ what the Chinese character means. Using Chinese characters to "help" you find other Chinese characters is a bit stupid in my opinion.
6.
Dictionary Layout:
Anyone who expects this dictionary to have the clear, two-colour entries, typefaces, and examples that made Oxford's Starter Chinese dictionary so pleasant to use will be sorely disappointed in this dictionary. Although it may have been too much to expect this dictionary to include measure words for relevant nouns, it would not have been difficult to implement devices such as clear typefaces, different colours, and bold print to distinguish between different definitions. The choice of typeface the authors have used for pinyin characters is awful and could easily have been made clearer.
7.
Paper Quality:
Although this is a large dictionary (over 1,000 pages), the paper is easily seen-through and the print can be made out on the other side of the paper.
The CDROM dictionary does have some good points however; it shows pinyin under each simplified character, and right-clicking on any character allows you to look that character up directly.
Conclusion:
In short, I would not recommend this dictionary to any beginner of Chinese. It does not seem to have been designed with them in mind. I cannot offer a comparative review of comprehensive Chinese dictionaries because I only have this one, but if I had the choice again I would not opt to buy this dictionary.
Although the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary may have far fewer definitions, it is at least legible, approachable, easy to understand, and supplies all of its many examples in pinyin as well as simplified Chinese. There is no contest for those beginning to learn Chinese, in my opinion.
 Excellent dictionary April 23, 2005
28 out of 32 found this review helpful
Very good dictionary. Tons of entries.
Other reviews were a little unfair. I'm not sure how you can say there are fewer than 100,000 words when it states on the cover there are 220,000 (click book image for enlarged version and see for yourself), did the reviewer count them? Also, I wonder whether another reviewer that had trouble finding words was having trouble with the language rather than the dictionary. It has taken me a while to get the nack of looking up words in pinyin, it's not quite alphabetical. It's alphabetic by initial (the first syllable? kind of? still learning) and then ordered by tone (or maybe it's vice versa!). Many words are there, just not where you'd expect them going purely by the alphabet.
I am about to order a second dictionary so my wife and I can both have one! Right now we have to take turns and it slows us down trying to study!
My only qualm with it at all is that example phrases seem to be all in Chinese characters, not pinyin. The starter edition of the Oxford dictionary is better for phrases (or get a dedicated phrase book). Having the phrases in characters is a feature I hope to grow into.
 Good dictionary, especially for Chinese-English February 2, 2007
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
This is a review of the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary, 3rd ed.
This is an English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionary. The advantage of a dictionary like this is, of course, that you can use it to translate in either direction. The drawback, which to my mind is significant, is that dictionaries like this are never really good at either the English-Chinese or the Chinese-English. Furthermore, most of the time you are either trying to write something in Chinese (in which case you just want a really good English-Chinese dictionary) or you are trying to translate something out of Chinese (and then you only want a really good Chinese-English dictionary).
An exception to the above generalization is when you are travelling in China and want a good pocket dictionary for situations in which you are stumped. Although this is entitled a "pocket" dictionary, you would need to have really big pockets: it's 5" x 8" x 1.5".
So there are some definite downsides to this dictionary. But how good are the translations? Let's compare the Oxford dictionary with the Harper Collins Chinese Concise Dictionary and see how they stack up.
On the Chinese-English side, the primary entries in both the Oxford and the Harper Collins are alphabetized by Pinyin with the lead characters in simplified. The Oxford also provides traditional forms in parentheses, but the Harper Collins does not. Both dictionaries provide a fair number of sample sentences and phrases. My offhand impression is that the Oxford sentences are frequently more idiomatic Chinese, but I'm not a native speaker, so I can't guarantee that.
Consider the entry for ZHI3, "paper." Oxford gives you the sample phrase YI4 ZHANG1 BAI2 ZHI3 (in characters without Pinyin) and translates it, "a blank sheet of paper." (Note that this tells you what the measure word for paper is too.) Oxford then gives you 10 words or expressions starting with ZHI3. In contrast, Harper Collins does not tell you what the measure word is, and gives you only five words or expressions that start with ZHI3. (Oxford, but not Harper Collins, includes the expression "paper tiger": not used much since the death of Mao, but still a useful phrase to know.) My sense is that this is representative: on Chinese-English, Oxford is the better of the two.
What about English-Chinese? Under "floor," Oxford and Harper Collins give most of the same senses, but there are some interesting differences. For example, for the first two senses, Oxford gives (1) DI4MIAN4, DI4BAN3, (2) DI3 (in characters and Pinyin). But there is no explanation in English of the fact that sense (1) refers to the floor of a house, while sense (2) refers to the floor of the ocean or a cave. There is a note in Chinese explaining the second sense, but you need to read Chinese at a second-year level (at a minimum) to understand it. On the other hand, Harper Collins gives "(of a room) DI4BAN3" and "(of sea, valley) DI3." In addition, Harper Collins explains the difference in usage of "ground floor" between British and American English. (I didn't know about that myself!) Again, I think this is representative: Harper Collins is better (at least for a beginner) on English-Chinese.
Overall, I think the Oxford dictionary is better than the Harper Collins. But you'll never find one dictionary that does both Chinese-English and English-Chinese equally well.
 The dictionary I recommend automatically. September 6, 2005
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
I owed the previous edition of this Dictionary which I would have found very useful if it wasn't for the extremely tiny print they used. This new edition has got large print (easy to read) so it fulfills all my needs.
Entries in simplied and traditional (although they forgot the traditional letters in some of the example sentences), pinyin accompanies most of the Chinese items (again they forgot to add the pinyin of the example sentences). But, summing up I'd recommend that dictionary to any student interested on undertaking Chinese seriously. The ratio quality/price is simply unbeatable.
Difficult to use May 22, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Aside from the general complaints given by other reviewers, the list of proper nouns on both the CD and the text version of this dictionary is awful.
As an example, searching for "Cuba" in the electronic version yields one result, Guantanamo Bay (yes, the prison), but no entry for the country itself. Searching for "South Africa" yields the transliteration of Cape Town but once again the country itself is nowhere to be found. The text version is even worse.
Text is hard to read, examples of usage are hard to distinguish from one another because they aren't marked properly with different type sets or styles. Instead of "or" when showing alternative ways of using a word, the dictionary uses huozhe, the chinese equivalent, which makes it very hard for someone not familiar with reading large amounts of Chinese characters to see what's really being said.
The cheap price and comprehensiveness are attractive, but you are better off buy some other dictionary if you can.
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