Being able to look up new words is a must when learning Mandarin.
These 15 Chinese dictionaries have convenient features like handwriting and image recognition, stroke order, native speaker pronunciation and text translations that make them the best available.
Pleco is one of the most popular Chinese dictionaries thanks to its user-friendly and straightforward format.
Pleco’s functionality is simple: It helps you translate, fast.
When you come across a character you don’t know, you can just draw it with your finger and Pleco will translate it for you in seconds. Of course, you can also search for characters using English or pinyin.
Each character entry also comes with audio so you can hear how native speakers pronounce it.
Pleco also lets you open a document and there’s a built-in flashcard system.
The dictionary feature on FluentU is video-based. When you look up a word, you get a curated list of Chinese videos from authentic sources (like YouTube) where it’s used in context.
You can choose videos to watch based on your language level and interests and pick up new vocabulary through the interactive subtitles. Or, you can search for a specific word you want to learn and find videos where it’s used in natural contexts.
Each dictionary entry includes the word’s translation, part of speech, example sentences and a corresponding image. Both the word and example sentences come with audio pronunciation by a native speaker, which you can play at normal or slow speed.
Searching for a word brings you a page with all of its possible meanings. There’s also a Words-Idioms tab, which shows longer words that are made with the word you entered.
For example, searching for 喜欢 (xǐ huān) also shows the word 讨人喜欢(tǎo rén xǐ huān), which means to endear oneself to someone.
The “examples” tabs is one of the most valuable ones. It shows tons of example sentences for the word you looked up.
There’s also an option to look up words by taking pictures of them with your phone’s camera.
If you’re looking for a beginner-friendly dictionary that’s right on your browser, then check out the Written Chinese dictionary.
Searching for words brings you the primary translation at the top of the page. Then it also gives you a separate list of related characters and expressions for expanding your vocabulary.
Aside from Simplified and Traditional Chinese, there’s also Cantonese support (since they use the same characters but with different pronunciations).
Hanping is extremely useful for studying for the HSK as it comes with complete HSK word lists.
It has a camera scan function, which allows you to scan Chinese text into the app to translate it, even with vertical text.
Another feature that helps with real-life conversations is a voice recorder. You can speak either English or Chinese into the app, and it’ll recognize each word and provide translations.
There’s a little bit of a drawback there, though—Hanping only translates words, so if you need a whole sentence translator, this one won’t be the one.
One thing that makes Hanping special is its idioms dictionary. Finally, in addition to HSK and YCT exam dictionaries, a conversational one is also included.
Although the design of the website and the dictionary is quite simple, MDBG does its job—and offers extra features, as well.
MDBG is great if you just need a translation from time to time, but don’t want anything to take up space on your phone. It has all the essentials: translations for both English and pinyin lookups, as well as a Chinese character search.
And like others on this list, MDBG also has a handwriting function.
The dictionary also lets you test yourself with a quiz. Based on HSK vocabulary, you can either take a Chinese Character Quiz, learn new Chinese characters with flashcards or you can subscribe to their web feed and learn 10 new words a day.
The ArchChinese dictionary probably has the most extensive ways of inputting words for a Chinese dictionary. You can look up entries in any mixture of pinyin, English and Chinese characters along with handwriting (on the browser!). They even have rarer input systems, like cangjie input and four-corner input.
Since its website is full of study resources, the dictionary is set up so you can also learn from it. You can add words to your own vocabulary list and even check vocabulary lists from the most popular Chinese textbooks.
Its entries for characters are especially in-depth, with unusual information like etymology, other characters with the same pronunciation and even usage ratings.
ArchChinese has been around for a while, and it’s used by popular universities and institutions like the US Department of Defense, Microsoft and different Confucius Institutes, so it’s definitely a reliable dictionary.
Wenlin is a go-to for every (aspiring) sinologist. You’ll want to use it during class or while translating extensive texts, rather than when walking around Beijing or ordering in a Chinese restaurant.
There are five main products offered by the developers, and the free version has almost all you need! Just be aware: Wenlin is an online software suitable for computer download with no smartphone option.
One of its best features is textdocument translation. You can load an article or document into the program, and translations will automatically appear at the bottom as you go through it with your cursor.
Like a physical dictionary, you can also look at English and pinyin words alphabetically and Chinese characters according to their frequency of usage.
YellowBridge is extremely useful for advanced Chinese learnerswho are learning about radicals, which are the components of hanzi that often have similar meanings. Understanding radicals is incredibly handy for translating hanzi through components and context clues, especially while traveling abroad.
You can also look up hanzi through common character structures. Simply type out or select the radical or character structure of your choosing, select whether it’s on the right or left and search through all the hanzi the dictionary brings up.
In addition to this super-useful feature, you can look up Chinese to English, pinyin to Chinese and English to Chinese translations with ease. You can even use a voice recording feature to look up words. How cool is that?
Cojack is a handy little hanzi resource that boasts radicals in chart form. Each group of radicals is sectioned off into 17 respective radicals typically found in Chinese. To explore a radical, simply click on one. You’ll be presented with a bunch of characters that contain that radical.
Upon clicking any character, you’ll be brought to a page where you can find all the different words and phrases that contain that character, along with its pinyin and a step-by-step animation showing you how to write it.
This resource is great to use if you’re reading a physical book and can’t copy and paste unfamiliar hanzi into a search engine to find out its definition. Simply look for one of the character’s radicals and explore the different words that it’s a part of.
It’s also a great way to pick apart hanzi you already know to better understand what its radicals mean, which is a fantastic hack for understanding the gist of unfamiliar hanzi in a travel setting.
If you’re interested in knowing everything about a particular character rather than a basic definition, HanziCraft is worth looking into.
Copy and paste or type a hanzi character, hit “Explore” and you’ll be presented with a page packed full of just about every fact you could possibly want to know about that particular character.
This includes its frequency in common Chinese conversation, its radicals and definitions, pinyin, example words and phrases, phonetic clues and decomposition levels.
Many of the dictionaries we’ve covered are in-browser only, which is a bit of a bummer for religious smartphone app users! This is where SmartHanzi comes in. It’s available as an app on just about every device you could possibly be using.
Using SmartHanzi is pretty cut-and-dried. Type in a hanzi character and click “Enter.” You’ll get all the info you need on that character, including the definition, pinyin, variations and etymological lessons for advanced students.
You can also look up Mandarin definitions in English, German and French. Outside of the hanzi dictionary, SmartHanzi offers tips and tricks for learning Mandarin.
Chinese-Tools is similar to Cojack in that it’s radical-based. The main difference is that your definitions will be presented to you in hanzi, making this a great tool for advanced learners. You can also search by pinyin or full characters.
Out of every entry on this list, Zhongwen is probably the most ancient of them all. Still, why stop using something if it works well?
Some learners benefit from breaking hanzi down into outlined categories. Zhongwen helps with this. You can search for a character by English, pinyin, radicals or the character itself.
In the middle column, you’ll be able to see every possible definition for that character. On the far right column, you’ll see where that character’s place on the radical map lies.
This is a great resource for learning more about where characters come from and how they relate to other words.
However, there’s definitely going to be a time where your friend sends you a phrase in hanzi that leaves you scratching your head. Maybe the rise of Chinese internet slang will be to blame. Luckily, Xiaoma is here to help.
This little dictionary is unique in that Chinese speakers, as well as Chinese learners, can submit new words and character combinations. It currently has nearly 100,000 words and phrases that you can look up through characters or pinyin.
You can also check out the most and least frequently used characters online as well as words and characters that will typically be found on the HSK exam.
How to Look Up Chinese Characters in a Dictionary
Looking up Chinese characters using online dictionaries is usually pretty easy. There are a few ways to do this.
The first option is pinyin—use your English keyboard to type the romanization of the character into the search bar. But of course, this only works if you know the character’s pinyin.
If you don’t know the pinyin yet, most apps have a handwriting feature. For example, Pleco lets you draw the character on the screen to look it up.
Another option is to use an app that supports document reading—one that lets you upload a document and tap on unknown characters to look them up.
If you were to use a traditional, physical Chinese dictionary, you’d have to identify the radical and then count the strokes apart from the radical. This takes you to a reference page where you look for the character until you find it.
Whether you’re a student, teacher or visitor, it’s a good idea to have a Chinese dictionary on hand.
No matter what you’re looking for, these five dictionaries have you covered.
