Mandarin Chinese at a Glance: Foreign Language Phrasebook & Dictionary

Having lived in China, this is the phrase book I recommend the most to friends and family that travel to the PRC. The main reason is that I found many new expats and visitors using guides that had the English word and the Pinyin pronunciation (the English version of the Mandarin word) -- but would fail to provide the Chinese Characters. If you don't know the language, it will be very difficult to speak it, with any phrase book. What is going to help you the most is pointing to the characters -- whether you're pointing it to a cab driver, someone at a restaurant, on the train, in an internet cafe, etc, they will understand you. If you just try to speak the pinyin, and don't know the language, you will be SOL. If you're a vegetarian or have dietary restrictions (including kosher, etc), this book covers it. It's very comprehensive. The size is great, fits in a purse or pocket; and the clear protective cover helps to protect it from the elements.

If you are young and have good eyesight this book will be PERFECT for your trip to China. My only complaint is that the print is very small. This book is well-organized, useful, and gives good instruction on pronunciation. You should know ahead of time that Chinese is not like European languages - you can't just buy the book, approximate what you see on the page, and make yourself understood. You have to study it a bit, and practice. I would say this is a good companion travel book to those who have taken some time to actually study a bit of Chinese. I found the Fluenz Mandarin program to be excellent for that.

I have used the previous edition of this phrasebook extensively and was delighted to see a new edition available. I've taken about 12 business trips to the PRC and Taiwan over the past 6 years. After the first few trips with Mandarin speaking coworkers, I have become more independent, with a lot of help from this book in managing day to day travel, accommodations, and other practicalities. While I have been slowly learning some basic spoken Mandarin, the phrasebook is effective in handling many simple but important tasks - buying train tickets, shopping, etc., with no spoken Mandarin at all. Compared to several other phrasebooks, this has a larger selection of situations and vocabulary, but still is pocket sized. It was good to see an updated edition; the book includes vocab and phrases for new technology such as email, Internet usage, etc. which some other phrasebooks lack. Several helpful physical features: the book is durable, with a good binding and heavy plastic jacket. The earlier edition survived a long time in my back pocket, and this edition appears to have the same quality. One caution: while it is possible for an English speaker to be fairly effective in pronouncing words in many European languages using phrasebooks, it will be difficult for most to manage the tones of Chinese (even though the book describes them), without some other resources to learn pronunciation. That said, it's still easy to point to the Chinese characters printed in the book adjacent to the English, and have your Chinese speaking party read them. The Chinese text in the book is printed using the Simplified characters used in the PRC, rather than Traditional used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. However, for general use I found that Taiwanese were able to make sense of the characters in the book, too. A subtle but interesting point: In the map of China printed on the back of the book, the island of Taiwan is printed in the same color as the PRC, suggesting that it's indeed a part of China. I imagine that this sends a positive political message to the officials in the PRC; possibly it could have the opposite effect in Taiwan.