An English - Vietnamese dictionary, the first of its kind to use data from the famed Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, hit shelves in bookstores across Vietnam on Saturday, the publishing house behind the book announced Friday.

It is also the first English - Vietnamese dictionary to be printed by the same publishing house in Hong Kong that has produced the origin Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary editions, Nguyen Minh Nhut, director of the Ho Chi Minh City-based Tre (Youth) Publishing House, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) Newspaper.

“The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary with Vietnamese translation was published to serve English teachers and learners,” he said.

The dictionary uses the new 8th edition updated early this year and has a massive capacity of 184,500 words and phrases, Nhut added.

The bilingual dictionary has thousands of items with the most common meanings, helping learners to improve their vocabularies, according to the director.

It also has the Oxford writing tutor part which can guide learners on how to write different types of essays in English, as well as help learners to develop ideas for their writing.

Nhut said the negotiations to get the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary translated into Vietnamese lasted five years. “Since 2007, we planned to translate the dictionary into Vietnamese,” Nhut said. “At first, the Oxford publishing house was indifferent towards our project since they had received many similar offers from around the world and at that time, they only approved the translation rights for four bilingual editions.”

Nguyen Trung Tanh, Director of the Foreign Language Center of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy, also expressed his good impression of the bilingual dictionary.

“One thing that makes the dictionary different is its short translations,” Tanh said. “It doesn’t translate sentences, it gives parallel words in Vietnamese and then gives examples in English. This is a new way of making a bilingual dictionary in Vietnam.”

“Another thing that makes me like the dictionary is it retains the original images in the original Oxford dictionary with Vietnamese translation,” he added. “It’s a eurhythmic combination between language and images, offering readers a detailed view of the English language in the life of British and Vietnamese people.

“The grammar of the dictionary is also detailed and accessible.”