Dictionaries

There are many Mandarin-English dictionary options available.  The ones below were found useful by Guang Ming families and teachers.

Even non-speakers can use a Chinese dictionary!  Knowing basic characters does help in identifying the "radical", which is found in the first part of each character.  Radicals are often in a "nickname" form from their usual stand-alone form.  As an example, you can learn about the "water" radical here.

Mandarin uses the simplified character set.  You can recognize a text written in Mandarin by looking for a couple common simplifed characters:  个 (ge) is a measure word like "the", and 们 (men) makes pronouns plural, like "we".  (In comparison, the traditional 們 (men) character looks more like an ornate arch over a gate.)

Print Dictionaries

The beginner and pocket Oxford dictionaries have the same instructions on how to use the character radical/stroke index to find the pinyin to do the translation. All of these are recommended for middle-school ages or older.

For the youngest learners: 

Online Dictionaries

Apps