Unfortunately there is no single dictionary that caters perfectly to the needs of a student learning Mandarin. It is probably necessary to own several dictionaries. There are a few important things to note when considering which dictionary to purchase.
First, does the dictionary use Hanyu Pinyin or some other system to indicate the pronunciation? While Hanyu Pinyin is the general standard you may find some dictionaries in Taiwan that use Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符號; bo po mo fo) or other systems of romanisation. Make sure the dictionary uses a system that your are familiar with.
Traditional characters are the standard in Taiwan. However, only a limited number of dictionaries use traditional characters. Some of the better dictionaries for learners use simplified characters. If you already know traditional characters just take some time to learn some of the common simplifications. There is a lot of overlap between the two character sets so it is not that hard. Some dictionaries that use simplified will have the traditional characters in brackets or in a table. You can also cross reference to a dictionary with traditional characters if you are unsure.
There are some differences in usage and pronunciation between Taiwan and China. Check which country the lexicon is based on or if differences between the two countries are noted in the text. This is not really a big issue, but it is often helpful to know.
The final point is the indexing system. There are two main ways of indexing Chinese characters. The first is based on some combination of radical and stroke number. The other is ordering based on the pronunciation, usually alphabetically by Hanyu Pinyin, but occassionally based on Zhuyin Fuhao.
For the language learner alphabetical indexing by pinyin is the easiest to work with. However, knowledge of indexing by radical or stroke number is also necessary as you don't always know the correct pronunciation of a character.
If your Chinese is at an advanced level or you are doing translation work you might need to consider purchasing specialist dictionaries, in particular a good dictionary of idioms (成語) and technical dictionaries for specialist vocabulary.
Also se the section Chinese language learning materials. Below are some reviews of dictionaries that I own.
the article above said truth in comparison between tranditional Chinese and simplified chinese. but tranditional chinese is much more complicated characters. if you learn tranditional characters, that mean you choose an even harder way to learn chinese. simplified chinese character system really omited some characters. but now there are more than 1.3 billion people using this writing system and all the book in mainland are written this way. people didnt feel confusing on understanding. that is good example of the evolution of language. every language is trying use the simplist way to express people's feeling. if it is clear enough to communicate each other very well, if it could explain all kinds of meaning and feeling clearly. that's a good language. chinese characters have been changing several times in the history, each time it changes, people feel much more easy to read and write, this time, simplifying work is also a success. this procession has been done very seriously. not so absorb as the author stated above. it is an achievement of most outstanding Lingists in china. I grew up with the simplified characters, I feel it is very convieniont. it is hard to accept only for the people who are too old to adapt themself to the new world. in the article's opinion, it is better that every chinese should use the most complicated characters to make difference. then, why we didnt return to the original chinese characters which were used by ancient chinese thousands years ago. they are more complicated, and they are pictures.
so, i think the author know something about chinese, but what he said is trying to disguide the chinese learners.
Traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese both are important.....Great to know about the difference in these two languages..
Hi! I really like your blog.
Submitted by lei (not verified) on Fri, 2008-10-10 19:56.Hi! I really like your blog. I just want to mention one thing I believe that is important. Tranditional Chinese has a "very correct words use". I mean if anyone read simplified chinese text. You may find a lot of incorrect chinese characters in the articles. That is because PRC used a very few characters to instead of many characters. Simplified Chinese doesn't only simplify the way people write, but also reduce a number of characters normally used in Tranditional Chinese. It makes a lot of funny mistakes in chinese articles. For examples, 頭髮，發財 in tranditional chinese can be written as 头发 发财 in simplified chinese. You can see that 髮 is not equal to 發 in tranditional chinese. However, in simplified chinese, these two characters are written with the same character "发" . It is really ridiculus.
Chinese characters have a very obvious principle that each character has only one meaning. Therefore, there is no way to use one character to replace many other characters just because of the same pronunciation. The real Chinese only exists in places outside mainland China. Simplified Chinese would cause a fault of understanding what chinese is. I would recommand that ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ( bo po mo) system is the best way to correct accent and pronuciation and this system can help you learn real chinese much more quickly and deeply.
Surely, PRC has the largest population of using simplied chinese, for business reasons, learing chinese with simplified system is fine but it could not help you to get acquaintance with "Chinese". Last thing, If you had notice what the prime minister of PRC write, you may find that he still use tranditional chinese. Because only traditional chinese can show the correct meaning.
Anyway, my english level is lower than your chinese level. I hope all readers can understand what I am trying to say.
Thanks,