Customer Reviews

Mandarin Chineseā English Bilingual Visual Dictionary (DK Visual Dictionaries)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Dorling Kindersley (DK), as always, has a masterful control of fresh, eye-catching illustrations in all their books, and this Chinese-English Dictionary is no exception. Also it offers English, simplified Chinese characters AND pinyin, which is a fault in its rival, the Oxford Chinese-English Visual Dictionary, (however the DK one is not quite so comprehensive). It's in a smaller pocket size format, so it's a bit easier to carry around--and actually does have some very handy detail vocabulary, like kinds of woods used in furniture,soil types, medical vocabulary, all the different parts of a car and (glory hallelujah!) computer and internet vocab! Another good thing is that it includes action words (verbs) in addition to simply nouns BUT this dictionary is obviously simply a direct translation of DK's visual dictionaries for European languages/cultures. All of the references are to objects and actions in Western Europe/N. America (How often will you see Irish Soda bread or encounter "Thanksgiving Day" in China?)
China, while rapidly westernizing, visually is 85% different from what is depicted in this dictionary. When you say "house" in English, Westerners might think of something like a colonial clapboard structure with a picket fence. "Fangwu" (single-family western style house) is not what most Chinese would use to describe their dwelling: where is the festoon gate? the east and west courtyard wings? the kitchen block? the rainpool? The "house" maybe built of mud, be thatched, or even be a cave. To "picture" what CHINESE words mean, I would recommend pairing the DK visual dictionary with the Longman Chinese-English Visual Dictionary. The Longman dictionary is an endlessly facinating series of black and white drawings of Chinese everyday life that provide great contrast to the Western focused DK Mandarin Chinese-English Visual Dictionary.

I agree with F. J. Powell's critique that this book has a serious Western bias and lacks many important Chinese words. But this 320-page book is so full of useful information and presents it in such an attractive visual format (which should motivate study and facilitate knowledge retention) at such a reasonable price that it warrants five stars.

Chinese textbooks tend to stress Chinese customs, holidays, minority groups, historical figures and events, etc. So it's not so bad that this book goes in the opposite direction. Only a thick, unabridged dictionary will have every word in it, and reading such a tome cover-to-cover is hardly the most effective method for learning a language.

Another negative about this visual dictionary is that, although it does present verbs, it's mostly about nouns and some adjectives. And there are virtually no sentences. So it won't teach you Chinese. But it will definitely help enrich your vocabulary if you find yourself (as I often do) starting a sentence only to stumble on a noun, point at an object and say "neige dongxi." I've tried to explain baseball and (American) football to my father-in-law, and it's basically impossible. But this book actually has several pages on these subjects that I haven't found in any other books. It has 40+ visual pages just on food.

I wish the Chinese character font were larger, but the book is small enough to carry around, which is another plus.

If you want to learn nouns (esp. if you live in the West with Mandarin-speaking in-laws, as I do), get this beautiful, well-organized, informative book.

I was disappointed with this visual dictionary. I suppose I should have paid closer attention to the other reviews before making the purchase. My biggest complaint is that the font of the Chinese characters is much too small. Any character that is more than a few strokes is virtually impossible to distinguish. You would need a magnifying glass to be able to read the characters. I know why the book has this problem. All of the visual dictioanries are essentially the same -- they simply change the text for each language. Since the Chinese version requires both Pinyin and the Chinese characters, there isn't enough space to use a larger font. The cookie-cutter approach also means that the book is not culturally "in tune" with many items that you would find in China. Finally, since the dictionary is all nouns, I think it should include the corresponding measure words/classifiers for the nouns. This is a huge oversight, making the dictionary less valuable. I need to use another reference book to find out the corresponding measure words. The pictures in the dictionary are nice, but that doesn't overcome the flaws I have mentioned. While the cost of the book was relatively low, I still don't think it was worth purchasing. Oh well.

I just bought from Amazon this fantastic visual dictionary - despite of not looking into it - but I can say I was not disappointed: it is a DK ! Intelligent and pretty.( why DK did not release the "search inside"?)With incredible photos fine printed. An advice: It is in simplified characters.
For my studies, that are in traditional characters it is not a real problem, for the pronunciation ( pinyin ) is the same, so, for each issue I look, I write side-by-side the simplified form, the traditional character. It is a way of memorize both! What one should know is that, besides the numerous chapters, like, people, appearence, health, home, services, shopping, food, eating out, study, work, transport, sports, leisure, environment, reference and all, there are two complete indexes in chinese and in english , at the end of the book.Both in alphabetical order. Easy to search. 360 pages of brilliant paper. Nice layout.
More: the size is perfect to carry in a purse, schoolbag, hands: not small but not too big. Perfect. More: for each new theme, there are examples in using sentences, etc. Who wants more?..................

We used this dictionary often when we spent 35 days in China last summer. It was invaluable when trying to find postcards, tell the desk clerk the sink was overflowing in our apartment, and telling others what we were looking for in the marketplace. I know if would help if you needed a doctor who didn't speak English.

Our Chinese guide liked it so much we gave it to her. She is trying to improve her vocabulary in English. We bought this book because we are going back to China and I thought I would be lost without it.

We are traveling to Greece, Spain and Japan on our way to and from China. We bought these dictionaries in all those languages too. It's a small price to pay for the added convenience of spending time in a country without learning the language.

This compact, square-shaped visual dictionary is the best of its kind as far as I've seen. Being a visual dictionary, the majority of the words are nouns, but under many categories there are additional related adjectives and verbs, along with fixed phrases. Including nearly 6,000 nouns, the book covers the majority of objects that students would seek to know, while at the same time it doesn't overdo it with superfluous, obscure vocabulary. Ideal for English-speaking students of Mandarin or Chinese-speaking students of English as a reference.

I was very pleased with this book. I had already checked out a copy from the local library, so I knew what to expect. I do recommend getting another tool that includes audio, because if you are new to the language you will have no idea how to pronounce the words correctly. It is a great reference, for those who have at least a general understanding of the Mandarin sounds, but don't know all the words.

. . . all the way to the borders of the U.S. and U.K. (where it's published).

It's a little disconcerting to find a book teaching Chinese that's filled with Anglo people and western activities and interests. The reason for this: It's part of the DK series of *-English visual dictionaries that apparently all have the same pictures and English textual content.

Still, it covers a lot of ground and I'm happy to have it. I do mind that it misses a lot of what makes China unique--for a starter, I was looking for Chinese musical instruments and dim sum, both missing--but my only other quibble is the teeny, tiny pinyin text. It takes 20/20 vision and a bright light to even guess at the tones. The same can be (and has been) said about the characters. But my old eyes + a good magnifying glass let me sit and practice all the pronunciation I could ever wish for.

Five stars for effort, three for execution = four stars total.

While this dictionary includes attractive images that encourage browsing, the characters are somewhat small and the organization of the book by theme (rather than in alphabetical or Pinyin order) makes quick look-up difficult. Also, I have a hard time believing that simply listing all the body parts (for example) is an effective way to learn the Chinese words. Discussion of characters/etymology and Chinese-specific culture is limited, but this might be a fun book to look at with a non-English-speaking Chinese friend in order to facilitate communication.


Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

This is a very well made book with great photos. It contains both Hanzi characters and pinyin translations. This would probably be a good book for someone who has Chinese in-laws or someone who is taking Mandarin classes in the US. I really cannot recommend this book for anyone going to China, as there is too much emphasis on Western items. They don't even include the word for chopsticks (kuàizi) in this book. For those traveling to China and are serious about learning Mandarin, I strongly recommend the Fluenz Mandarin 1+2,3 program that is available here on Amazon.

Pros of this book:

-Beautifully photographed pictures
-Pinyin and Hanzi used
-Organized by topic
-Has both Chinese and English indexes
-Many useful topics covered (animals, cookware, tools, human body, etc)
-Amazon's sale price for this is very good for all that the book covers
-Can be a helpful tool for Chinese speaking people new to the US who want to improve their English

Cons of this book:

-Does not include a website download or audio CD to help with pronunciations
-Too small and may be hard to read for some
-Only Simplified characters are used, so not as useful for learning how to read some of the signs in most US Chinatowns
-Little to no emphasis on things that apply to Chinese life
-Doesn't really teach much in the way of sentences or measure words which are very important in Mandarin language

If you decide to buy this book, I would recommend also purchasing Cheng & Tsui Chinese Measure Word Dictionary (available on Amazon) to learn the correct measure word that goes with the items being described here. I also recommend The MDBG website to learn how to pronounce the words properly.