Chinese-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Dictionaries)

I agree with the positive comments given by other customers so you may ask why I've only given this dictionary 3 stars.

While the medium of a visual dictionary uses pictures, a visual dictionary must still fundamentally be about words (mainly nouns since other parts of speech are less suitable for photos).

The problem with this dictionary is that the words are printed in too small a font size. This is particularly true for the Chinese characters, making the structure of the more complex characters only apparent with the use of a magnifying glass.This is a major problem for a Chinese dictionary, where it must be assumed that the reader may not already know all the characters.

Given that the font size is more of a problem with the Chinese characters, since the English (in bold) and the pinyin are both fully legible (albeit small), the dictionary is far better suited to Chinese readers who are learning English than to anglophone readers learning Mandarin. (The comment from several others that the pictures are mainly from western countries perhaps reinforces this.)

I suspect the problem with the Chinese characters is lessened the greater the reader's existing knowledge of Chinese characters since the task becomes one of character recognition rather than initial learning. Nevertheless, it must remain crucial for any dictionary that words should stand out and be easily read.

The undoubtedly high quality of both paper and printing is insufficient to remedy this. At the very least, DK needs to produce a revised edition with a larger font size for the Chinese characters even if there's insufficient space within the current format to increase font size for the pinyin and English.

No title necessary (0/0 people found this helpful)

This excellent and reasonably priced book only loses 1 star on account of its small print, although this should not prove a problem for younger readers. Several of my Chinese friends were particularly pleased with it

Fantastic to learn manderin words (1/1 people found this helpful)

This book is fantastic to learn a great deal of Mandarin words.

The book quality is absolutely brilliant, with glossy pages and great pictures throughout to help you learn Mandarin.

However, if you are looking for a book to carry around with you as an aid in China this book isn't for you - it is bigger than I imagined and really has quite a weight to it.

The book is also very limited in how to use the words in any sentences - with only 2 small pages in the book dedicated to this.

The Chinese English dictionary is fantastic for anyone learning mandarin who wants a good knowledge of items right across the board. If you are wanting an overview of the language this will be too much.

Chinese-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Dictionaries) (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is an excellent reference resource - just about every noun for everyday life that you could ever wish for. Though compact, the book is well organised by subject eg. body, outer space, emotions, hobbies, weather etc. and well illustrated with labelled photographs. Every picture is labelled, in English, Pinyin and Mandarin, in detail (just in case you wanted to know the Mandarin name for your boiler's overflow pipe for example!)My only criticism is that the Mandarin characters a quite small but maybe that's just my eyes.

Room for improvement (0/0 people found this helpful)

I found this a very helpful book to take to China with me and a boon now I am trying to learn Mandarin. However, I have one small complaint - the pictures in the book look as though they were selected for a different language combination and Chinese and English substituted for the originals. This means that there are words for some less obvious objects but not for things that I encountered in China. And the context is very difficult to relate to in some of the pictures.

Chinese-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Dictionaries)

Dorling Kindersley

Reader Reviews:

Font size too small for Chinese characters (2/2 people found this helpful)

No title necessary (0/0 people found this helpful)

Fantastic to learn manderin words (1/1 people found this helpful)

Chinese-English Visual Bilingual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Dictionaries) (0/0 people found this helpful)

Room for improvement (0/0 people found this helpful)

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