Customer Reviews

Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary: English-Chinese, Chinese-English (Third Edition) (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition)

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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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a great dictionary, big enough to accommodate a reasonable font size (unlike various previous Oxford Chinese Dictionaries) but small enough (A5) to fit into a small bag.

I'd definitely complement this dictionary with the Chinese Character Fastfinder (0804836345) by Laurence Matthews, as there is really no way of finding a character in this dictionary if you don't know it's pronunciation and are unfamiliar with the radical index.

This dictionary is very similar to the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary, which is also from Oxford, red, and approximately the same size. The 3rd edition of this volume (0195911512 being the 2nd edition) has many new technological and scientific words).

Some ideas for a future edition:

1) Make the most common disyllabic entry bold so that it can be memorised as a locator for "AB de A" or "AB de B" questions to identify characters (i.e. happy - gaoxing, if this is the most common word under "gao" then it should be made bold, which will enable us to memorise "gaoxing de gao ma?"

2) Include a section on stroke order rules, such as in Hadamitzky and Spahn's Kanji & Kana (0804820775).

While perhaps not quite "pocket"-sized, this dictionary is compact and convenient and is a good resource to accompany a learner's first textbook in the Chinese language. Entries are clear and written in a large, legible font, and example sentences (a must for beginners who need as much exposure to the actual composition of the language as possible) are included for most major entries.

Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

This is not a "Pocket" dictionery. I was wanting something to carry with me on my travels and it is large and heavy. The dictionery is very thorough though if that is what you are wanting.

This is about the most comprehensive, versatile Pocket Chinese and English Dictionary I know in the market today. The 2009, 2010 editions only have some small additions. All of them are divided into two main parts :


PART ONE : English - Chinese Dictionary

A : Guide ( pp 1-10 )

B : Dictionary ( pp 1-512 ) Over 10,000 English words entries.
1) Locate an English word by alphabetical order.
2) Find out its definitions in Chinese words and their pronunciations in English and Mandarin (in Pinyin).
3) Find out some examples of its usage in English and Chinese.


PART TWO : Chinese - English Dictionary

A : Guide ( pp 1-3)

B : Radical Index ( pp 4-33)
1) Locate a Chinese word by first locating its Radical and then the stroke-count of its remaining character.
2) Fing out its Pinyin pronunciation.

C : Dictionary ( pp 1-610 ) Under 10,000 Chinese words entries.
1) Locate a Chinese word by its Pinyin order.
2) Find out its definitions in English.
3) Find out some phrases and sentences of its usage in Chinese and English.

( Here in part C one can see quickly all the Chinese words with the same pronunciation together, which is a fast and systematic way of learning the Mandarin pronunciation ! However, it requires one to be familiar with the Pinyin system first, which is only briefly shown in the Appendix - not sufficient for beginners ! )

D : Appendices
( pp 611-612 ) List of the Pinyin consonants and vowels, and their pronunciation in International Phonetic Symbols only.
( pp 613-614 ) List of China's provinces, some regions, and cities in Chinese and Pinyin.


The total pages from end to end, including the last blank page, is pp 1182. Many websites have a gross misinformation about its total pages.

I am learning disabled and this dictionary has not seen a lot of use as yet. It is the dictionary my language teacher suggests.

This is very good all-around dictionary. I have been studying Chinese for a couple of years and I find that this dictionary satisfies most of my dictionary needs. I bring it to my Chinese class every day. As a beginner I would recommend the Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary or the Tuttle Learner's Chinese English Dictionary. And to really learn to read Chinese it is worthwhile to get the Wenlin software package.

This dictionary was great for a recent trip I made to China. I wanted to bring along a single dictionary with both Enghlish-Chinese and Chinese-English sections. It is a little big, but it had the vocabulary I wanted so I'm willing to bring this in my shoulder bag. Some reviewers noted that there was a lack of pinyin in some example sentences in the Chinese-English section. I was annoyed by this at first, but I found that I could figure out the pinyin by checking back in the English-Chinese section. For example, when the example sentence of Chinese characters is translated into English without pinyin, look up the words of the translation in the English-Chinese section. It worked for me. I suppose if there was pinyin throughout, the dictionary would be larger, which might make it even less portable.

One drawback for me during my travels was that the dictionary does not include countries or place names. Otherwise a great dictionary.