Customer Reviews

The Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary: Spanish-English, English-Spanish

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My Master's thesis was a review and rating of large Spanish-English dictionaries. I find this dictionary, like all the other Oxford dictionaries, to be a good choice.

Here are a few of the factors which distinguish a good bilingual dictionary from a bad one.

To begin with, ignore certain publishers' marketing ploys such as entry and translation counts. They say nothing about the value of the words chosen.

The first valid factor to consider is lexicographic technique. A bad dictionary simply lists translations. Take, for example, the entry in the Cassell's Spanish Dictionary under the English headword loop: "lazo, gaza, nudo; ojal, presilla, alamar; anillo; recodo, comba, curva, vuelta," etc. For the English reader writing in Spanish, this is hopelessly inadequate, as the dictionary provides no clue as to which translation to use in which situation.

Compare the treatment of the same word in the far superior American Heritage Spanish Dictionary. "(length of line) lazo; (coil) vuelta; (bend) curva; (circular path) vuelta, circuito; (fastener) presilla" etc. Here, the user is given glosses in the native language to assist in identifying the right word for the context. Example sentences are also a tremendous help. Oxford is excellent in this respect, presenting good information to guide users through the semantic and syntactic complexities.

Second, a good dictionary should maintain an up-to-date lexicon, including such cultural and technological additions to the language as "baby sitter," "hostile takeover," "software," "flash drive." Oxford is a leader in this respect; its frequent revisions are more than mere window dressing and do a creditable job of covering the most recent additions to the language.

Third, idioms, slang, and cusswords can present real problems to the language learner, and a dictionary needs to handle them in a clear and frank fashion. This dictionary gets it right, giving stylistic equivalents for translations as well as clear advice to the user.

Be careful when you choose a bilingual dictionary, as some of the choices--Cassell's and Vox, for example--are downright terrible. The field of large dictionaries stays relatively static over time, and the best choices in it by far are Oxford, Collins, and Larousse.

The Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary is great. This book has every thing you need, for the price you can afford. Being a highschool Spanish student, It's very important to have a Spanish/English dictionary on hand. Like I mentioned earlier, this book has almost all the words and phrases possible to fit in one book, and it doesn't leave anything out. Like it or not the world today is vulgar, and for once I found a dictionary that doesn't leave out the inapropriate information that most dictionaries do. It has a tough hard cover and for the price they sell it at, this book is a steal. So, if you don't have one, and are currently looking for a Spanish/English dictionary then this is the one to buy. Trust me.

I started out with the Oxford Starter Spanish dictionary my first college semester of Spanish. It served its purpose for a little while but soon I was starting to grow out of it. This Spanish desk dictionary is exactly what a Spanish student needs. It has over 90,000 words and phrases and over 130,000 translations. It has both Spanish and English sections, it even tells you the country of origin when looking up a Spanish word, so you know if that word is used in Spain, Latin America, or in South America. In the back it has a lot of very common Spanish verbs listed and conjugated so if you can't remember the conjugation you can use this book to look it up. There is a ton of information in the back about Spanish word use, which I found very helpful. The best part about this dictionary is that it's very portable. The book is only 8" long and about 2" inches thick; also it's light and easy to handle. So if you're a college student you can always have this dictionary in your bag and you don't have to worry about it adding 10 pounds of weight. Whether you're a student of Spanish or someone who needs a little extra help speaking English this dictionary is a must have. Oh by the way to answer your question, yes, it has the bad words in there too.

I did a lot of comparison shopping among Spanish-English dictionaries of similar size (or slightly smaller) and like this one best.

I wanted to mention an interesting detail: For some inexplicable reason, the Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary and the Pocket Oxford Spanish Dictionary appear to be the same book, and are the same size. The only difference is that the "desk" dictionary is the hardcover version (the listed dimensions are very slightly larger because the hard cover extends beyond the page edges just a bit). The "pocket" dictionary is just the softcover version of same.

Now, why the "desk" version and the "pocket" version are the same size, I'll never know -- and, in fact, this "pocket" dictionary is much larger than a pocket-sized paperback -- not a big deal as long as you know what you are getting.

Nonetheless, a great dictionary, and I highly recommend it. I just thought this was an interesting bit of information.

The Vox Compact Spanish-English Dictionary is good, and weighs one pound 12 ounces. The Oxford Spanish Desk Dictionary is better and weighs two pounds. Neither fits in your pocket. I suggest buying either a pocket dictionary for traveling (light), or buying the Oxford dictionary for studying or traveling not so light. There's no reason to buy the Vox dictionary, except maybe price. Also, the Oxford Spanish Dictionary is mis-titled, it should be the Oxford Spanish-Engish Dictionary. It's equally for English speaking learning Spanish or Spanish speakers learning English.

As a beginning, but serious, student of the Spanish language, I find this dictionary to be very helpful. The entries are so comprehensive that I find myself learning more than the word or definition I went in search of each time I use the dictionary.

It looks like the Quality control guy felt asleep on the job. I got a dictionary with missing pages and that felt apart easily.

In a field with so many selections I would buy something sturdy.

The content of this dictionary is fine, but with use as a reference for only one semester of 2nd year Spanish, many of its pages have fallen out. They're glued along the inner edge to a thin flexible backing, and it doesn't take very many times of opening the dictionary to the same range of words before the glue gives out. One shouldn't have to be alert to losing pages as one uses a dictionary.

It is good. I was intending to purchase a more comprehensive dictionary though.