Bővebb leírás
I just have to clarify some aspects of this book. Since it has been designed to help people whose mother tongue is Hindi learn English, it does not translate all the words directly from English to Hindi. However, often there are rather explanations of the English terms provided in Hindi, while some words do not have the requisite English-to-Hindi translation (one word to one word) one would expect from such a dictionary. Further more, the words which are directly translated, do NOT contain the crucial information on their grammatical gender in Hindi (again, it is clearly not a bilingual dictionary and not a "companion" to the Hindi-English dictionary by R.S. McGregor). Still, the book has helped me a lot in learning Hindi's written language.
The reason why this book does not always offer one-word translations of English words, is that they simply do not exist in Hindi. As a native speaker with full proficiency in Hindi (but only the oral language, hence trying to learn the written language), I can affirm that fact. A lot of words relating to Western concepts do not have equivalents in Indian culture, and therefore no real Indian words. Still, the majority of the English words are given direct Hindi translations.
This book does give some colourful and generally humorous translations of concepts which are quite recent or alien in India - for instance pizza (not the best example) is translated roughly as "a round piece of dough on which one may put tomatos". Quite funny to read those kinds of entries!
This dictionary is made in India for people whose native tongue is Hindi and who wish to learn English. That is why there is no information provided on the Hindi nouns' genders. The publication is therefore not intended for non-Hindi speakers to use as an English-Hindi dictionary.
Still, being an Oxford dictionary, I will highly recommend it. The book is excellent in its coverage of Western terms and concepts and gives explanations and translations in the finest form of Hindi I have probably ever read, clearly adhering to Oxford's renowned standards. It still serves as a bilingual dictionary, and serious students will most surely have profit from using it. I have three other English-Hindi dictionaries (and they are, in contrast to this one, marketed as English-Hindi dictionaries for Anglophones learning Hindi) and none of them can compare with the breadth and quality of this Oxford work.
For a formal review and synopsis, consult the product information page for this dictionary at the British version of Amazon, at www.amazon.co.uk . This American version has not added that information.
