Customer Reviews

The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English & Chinese Dictionary

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

 

 

I love these books. Really, I do. They have such a WIDE spectrum of topics, areas careers, trades...you name it.
The outline of each book is as follows:
*pictures of various objects/situations (For example, a ilustration of a lab and various things in the lab numbered, like a beaker, burner, microscope, etc.).
*A list next to the ilustration with the forgien word, then the english equivilant underneath.
And thats it! It is SO simple to understand, and it is broken down into (Many MANY) sections that are every-day situations that you usually would not get from a standard college-level textbook.
Only one problem THIS BOOK HAS NO PINYIN FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT TOO ADVANCED!! I wrote to the editors and they said "We thank you for your suggestion, but as of this time we have no plans to make a new edition. IF AS MANY PEOPLE WHO READ THIS VOICE YOUR OPINION OF HOW IMPORTANT PINYIN IS TO A STUDENT, WE MAY GET THEM TO INCLUDE IT IN THE NEXT EDITION!! Just e-mail them from the oxford site.

This book is wonderful. If you've ever needed to know the character for auricola, bustle, or pipe scraper, you'll find it here. The illustrations are mainly in black and white, though the section on colors and chroma gets a full-color page. The characters are traditional, small but readable. My only gripe is that there is NO PRONOUNCIATION GUIDE - no pinyin, no wade-giles...nothing but the english word and the characters. This is a bit frustrating if you are not god, and don't know each character by sight. You can, of course, locate the pronounciation in another dictionary by stroke order. But it would be so simple for the editors to include pronounciation in the next edition. Still, I haven't found a better pictorial dictionary.

Great reference for technical translation April 12, 2000 I have Oxford-Duden pictorial dictionaries in both Chinese and Thai, and have found them very helpful reference materials indeed for situations where translation of esoteric or extremely technical items is required, such as working parts of machinery, military hardware, etc. Obviously, being a pictorial dictionary, abstract nouns as well as verbs are not listed. I should also say that this dictionary would more than likely be superfluous for a basic-level speaker. I think it would probably be quicker to look up a word such as "sparrow" in a standard Eng-Chinese dictionary than to track down the same word using this one. However, it is a fantastic technical reference.

My first reaction was to give this book only 1 star because THERE IS NO PINYIN! So for me, it was absolutely worthless. Sorry. I'm not trying to be cruel, just honest. I also have the Spanish version of the Oxford-Duden Pictorial Dictionary. It has almost the same material as the Chinese version, but at least I can use it. In fact, I have used the Spanish version quite frequently. However, I have kept this Chinese version because it will be a very valuable source of English-Chinese vocabulary for my fiancee, who is from China. Every page is filled with Chinese and English words from every walk of life: astronomy, geography, clothing, the rooms of the house and their contents, plants, animals, cars, computers, school and education, industry, business, transportation, communication, sports, and so much more. For a person who can already read Chinese, this will be a valuable addition to their book shelf. However, for people like me who are trying to learn Chinese, the book is not (yet) very helpful. Better are Langenscheidt's dictionaries and others. So, I give this book 3 stars. It's an excellent book for those who can read Chinese. However, it's worthless to me since I can't read Chinese.

A great noun builder for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese (or Chinese-speaking students of English), this book will help you attain a degree of precision in your vocabulary that would be difficult to achieve any other way without a substantial investment of time. The dictionary is arranged by subject areas varying from the highly technical (e.g. precision instrument parts) to the everyday (e.g. tableware). There is no romanization, however. The simplified character set is used throughout to reflect contemporary mainland usage. About one-fourth of the volume is taken up by the index which is helpful if you want to quickly find the translation of a particular word without having to wade through the many subject areas. The Chinese portion of the index is arranged in the traditional radical-based format. English speakers could have been benefited from the addition of alphabetical pinyin-based entries in the index. Well-suited for browsing (a quality that is rare for a dictionary) and very different from most other language learning resources, this book is indispensable for the serious language student or professional working abroad.

I'm having a difficult time imagining the ideal situation in which this dictionary would be useful: it is useless for beginning or even intermediate learners of Chinese as there is no Pinyin to indicate the phonetic pronunciation of terms written in Chinese characters. Beginning learners will bring this book home and only to make the depressing discovery that when they look up an English term, they can't read the Chinese translation. Advanced learners of Chinese should already be relying on an English-Chinese dictionary or a Chinese-Chinese dictionary written in Chinese for Chinese speakers to truly increase their fluency. It therefore must be for Chinese-speaking learners of English, but there seems to be plenty of cheaper alternatives (especially if you live in China) for reference materials that simply list a large number of specialized trade terms.

Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color