LibGuides: Chinese Research and Bibliographic Methods for Beginners: Dictionary

Chinese-English Dictionaries with Simplified or Traditional Characters?

The differences between dictionaries with simplified and traditional characters:

Who should choose dictionaries with traditional characters?

Note: In practice, it is easier to pick up simplified characters after learning the traditional forms, rather than the contrary.

Probably the most popular beginning dictionary. The dictionary provides authoritative coverage of over 26,000 words and phrases from every major field of reference, including science and technology, in addition to core general vocabulary.

A dictionary published in Mainland China and offering almost 100,000 compounds and phrases. It uses pinyin and simplified characters, with traditional characters in parentheses.

A good pocket-sized dictionary for traditional-Chinese-character learners who are familiar with pinyin.

This dictionary must be used carefully (e.g., the pronunciations given are highly unreliable), but it is still useful as a starting dictionary when learning Classical Chinese (wenyanwen 文言文).

Chinese-Chinese dictionaries are incredibly useful for advanced Chinese learners.

Character dictionaries either include very few or no phrases. However, they usually cover many more individual characters and are useful for tracking the variety of nuances in the characters themselves.

An authoritative one-volume Chinese language dictionary published by the Commercial Press. Contemporary Chinese Dictionary is the first medium-to-large-scale Chinese reference book in China, which contains about 56,000 entries, including characters, words and expressions, idiomatic phrases and idioms.

There are numerous dictionaries that deal with specialized subjects, and examples at UNC include:

Multilingual

Chinese Dictionaries

Subject Dictionaries