Bilingual Visual Dictionary Mandarin Chinese English [Paperback]

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.