Review of YellowBridge Online Chinese Dictionary

YellowBridge (黃橋 HuángQiáo) is one of the best online Chinese dictionaries available today. When I studying on or near my computer, it is the first place I go if confronted by new Chinese vocabulary or characters. (If you are studying on the go, however, check out my article on the best Chinese dictionary apps for Android and iOS4)

Here’s a rundown of the good and the bad of YellowBridge:

The Good

• It’s free! For being so feature-rich, we are lucky to have access to Yellow-Bridge for a grand total of zero dollars.
• Audio recordings: This wonderfully useful feature used to be available only to paid members, but is now free to everyone. Hurray! Just click the speech bubble below each term to hear it pronounced.
• Presentation of both Simplified & Traditional  Chinese Characters: This is a Godsend. While most Chinese learners end up learning “Simplified Characters” (简体字 JiǎnTǐ Zì) since they are what’s used in Mainland China, I highly recommend that you also learn “Traditional Characters” (繁體字 FánTǐ Zì). Not only the traditional forms still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many Chinese communities across the globe, but they give you direct access to ancient Chinese culture. And if you are going to learn both, it is far easier to go “downhill”, that is, starting with the traditional forms and then moving onto their simplified counterparts.
• Multiple search options: You can search from Chinese to English, English to Chinese, and even Pinyin to Chinese.
• Break down of character radicals and components: This is a linguists dream. YellowBridge includes links to the etymological origins of each semantic or phonetic chunk. Be careful though; it is easy to get lost in the details and forget what you originally went there to look up!
• Animated stroke order: This is an amazingly powerful tool that used to available on only the most expensive electronic dictionaries. Now it’s free online. If only I had started learning Chinese characters ten years later…

The Bad

There are few things to complain about with YellowBridge. There are, however, a few things missing that I hope they eventually add to the mix:

• Example sentences: It’s always helpful to see how a given word is used in a sentence, especially when looking up less common words, or terms with multiple meanings.
• Ability to translate entire phrases: As it stands, YellowBridge, like most dictionaries, only translates words and cannot parse complete phrases or sentences as Google Translate does. It would be great if they could someday add this feature, lest otherwise faithful users jump ship and swim toward Googler shores…
• A mobile app: I usually need dictionaries most when I’m out on the go and see something on a sign, in a food menu, or struggle to communicate a particular word with the person across the table at a coffee shop. While you can of course access the dictionary via your mobile device’s web browser, it would make life much easier if they developed a mobile version for iPod Touch/iPhone, Android, etc.

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