[.ca] Tuttle S Concise Indonesian Dictionary (ISBN 0804818649)

great value, perfect size:
I've been making fairly heavy use of this dictionary and find it indispensible. While there are some words missing (the most surprising being "tanpa", without!), it's quite complete for its size and price. You do need to know the root form of verbs to look some of them up, which requires a little knowledge of the language, but all in all it's a great buy.

Your best mini Indonesian dictionary:
Unfortunately Echols and Shadilly's two volume Indonesian dictionary is a little too bulky to carry when back-packing in Indonesia. On my first two visits to Indonesia I took the MIP Concise Indonesian Dictionary, which fits comfortably into a pocket, and it never really left my person. While I really like this dictionary (and will probably buy a copy of the new edition), with about 4000 entries in each section its limitations were always fairly obvious. For my most recent trip I bought a copy of Tuttle's Concise Indonesian Dictionary. With more than twice as many entries as the smaller dictionary, I expected this to be pretty solid. Most of the time it was, but there were a few problems: some words I expected to find - "swap" is one, "retribusi" is another - weren't included (though there is a somewhat obscure entry for "tank steamer"); there is an entry for "polemics" rather than for "polemic"; and explanation of meanings is limited, creating problems with polysemic words which even reverse lookup often fails to resolve. On the plus side, Tuttle's Dictionary just fitted into my trouser pocket, and its sturdy plastic cover is a godsend given the wear and tear of travel.

Misses too many important words to be useful:
I found this book to be of little help in translating Indonesian newspaper articles etc. There are just too many everyday words that are not covered. This is not excused by its being a "concise" dictionary, as it includes a good number of really fairly obscure words.