Customer Reviews

Chinese-English Dictionary (A Chinese-English Dictionary Compiled for the China Inland Mission)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What does a dictionary first published in 1931, last revised in 1944, uses an antiquated system of Romanization and is weighted towards expressions from literary style Chinese have to offer the student of modern Chinese? The answer is plenty. This dictionary, for all of its shortcomings, is an indispensable tool for the serious student of Chinese. It covers material that is not in many of the more modern dictionaries; material that was omitted for reasons of economy. It also provides an invaluable mechanism to cross check the entries of the more modern books, providing alternate and additional meanings for words. Moreover, it provides a snap-shot of the language as it existed decades ago, providing insights into how best to translate material from the period of time when modern Chinese prose was taking form.

Some of the other reviews on this page point out that certain Chinese-Chinese dictionaries are better than Mathews. But that's hardly a fair criticism; you have to compare it to other Chinese-English dictionaries, and those that take the classical language into account are hard to come by. (One work that is rapidly gaining in popularity is the Taiwanese Far East Chinese-English dictionary, which is expanded from an older dictionary compiled by Liang Shih-ch'iu.)

There are several problems with the Mathews dictionary, and the old Romanization is the least of them. More disturbing are Mathews's erroneous pronunciations, which are too frequent. You cannot rely on him at all for tones, for example. In the second edition, the great Y.R. Chao went through all of the entries and corrected many of Mathews's errors--but the press did not re-alphabetize the entries to reflect the corrected pronunciations, so if you are looking up a character with a pronunciation that Mathews happened to get wrong, you'll have to go back and use the stroke index to find it, unless you want to try and guess which mistaken reading Mathews might used. Both alternatives are irritating.

As another reviewer pointed out, Mathews does not provide any historical context for his definitions. One simply cannot tell whether a compound is modern or ancient--or, more dangerously, how the meaning of a compound may have changed over time. To be sure, there is a limit to how comprehensive a one-volume dictionary can be. But it still should be possible to give some brief indication as to whether a particular sense is attested in the classical language.

In sum, this dictionary is still useful, and a student will want it on his or her shelf, but it can be both frustrating and misleading.

When I first started studying Classical Chinese, I used this book so often that I photocopied the character indexes to save time. However, I haven't opened it too often since those first classes.

The definitions seemed adequate at the time, and it is in English (especially useful when the word is some random object from centuries past), but I found the following things got in my way:

1. It uses an odd spelling system (Wade-Giles is more difficult than pinyin and zhuyin)
2. It sometimes didn't have the depth of the word I was looking for (forcing me to consult Chinese sources -- I should have started off with the Chinese sources.)
3. There is little context for definitions (historical notes or quotes from classical texts).

Although it's a good start, once you're relatively comfortable with modern and classical Chinese, it's probably a good idea to move on to Chinese sources -- at Berkeley we often use Gu hanyu changyong zi zidian for words that we don't need ALL of the information for, and the hanyu da cidian (or zhongwen da cidian, etc.) for stuff that needs lots of detail.

What, is this book still around? This was required classroom material for anybody who studied Chinese prior to 1980. Since then, other material has come out that sometimes has more characters (which is not an accurate indicator of total entries), frequently has newer coinages (but leaves older ones out), usually is smaller (admittedly, Matthews weighs a ton) but probably nothing that is all-around more useful than old Matthews. If you are a serious student of Chinese you should acquire it.

Remember those GM ads? "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" (Buyers soon realized they would have preferred their fathers' old cars to the new junk GM was making in the 1980s!) Well, this truly *is* your grandfather's Chinese dictionary.

Weighing in at five pounds, this extremely large paperwight also includes over a thousand pages packed with up-to-date Chinese-to-English translations...as of 1943. Just to provide some historical context, that is before Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan!

As you might expect, this is not the dictionary to take on vacation. It is both too big and too outdated to be of any use to either a casual traveler or even a businessperson. Nor will it be appealing to new students first learning Chinese, who will no doubt be more comfortable with pinyin over the ancient Wade-Giles. But if you are a serious student of Chinese history or Classical Chinese literature, or simply enjoy languages and learning more about the development of one of the world's most important ones, this could be an interesting addition to your bookshelf.

Getting the dictionary in hand is another matter. Sixty dollars is a lot to pay for any book, and while Amazon Marketplace shows some sellers, my suggestion would be to troll campus bookstores for a copy. All in all, and especially given the price, I cannot rate this higher than 3 stars.

(The image shown at the top of this page is not a graphics error; the book is black with no text on the cover!)

When I first started studying Classical Chinese, I used this book so often that I photocopied the character indexes to save time. However, I haven't opened it too often since those first classes.

The definitions seemed adequate at the time, and it is in English (especially useful when the word is some random object from centuries past), but I found the following things got in my way:

1. It uses an odd spelling system (Wade-Giles is more difficult than pinyin and zhuyin)
2. It sometimes didn't have the depth of the word I was looking for (forcing me to consult Chinese sources -- I should have started off with the Chinese sources.)
3. There is little context for definitions (historical notes or quotes from classical texts).

Although it's a good start, once you're relatively comfortable with modern and classical Chinese, it's probably a good idea to move on to Chinese sources -- at Berkeley we often use Gu hanyu changyong zi zidian for words that we don't need ALL of the information for, and the hanyu da cidian (or zhongwen da cidian, etc.) for stuff that needs lots of detail.

Other reviewers have illustrated the short comings of this book, and many of its advantages. There is one more thing to consider, which was crucial for me as a Latin linguist who dabbles in Chinese: Matthews covers Classical Chinese (wenyan) usage. It is not comprehensive, and the aim of the book is not to help you read Mengzi/Mencius or the Daodejing, but that is not the aim of any Chinese-English dictionary I have seen, and only this one gives enough coverage to older usage that it can allow you to make a fair start on reading the Classical language. When you've got your modern Chinese and Japanese solid, you'll be ready to move on from Matthews.

I got this book for a friend who was trying to assimilate into the Chinese culture & thought this would be helpful. It was but he was much better off with an electronic translation machine or an e-reader. Helpful book but not overly impressed.