Two Chinese versions of the Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) were developed for assessing speech understanding ability of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers - the Cantonese Hearing In Noise Test (CHINT) and the Mandarin Hearing In Noise Test (MHINT). A total of 168 subjects with normal hearing thresholds participated in the studies. Sentence materials that represent daily conversational speech were created and recorded. These sentences were equated for difficulty by adjusting their presentation levels in noise. Twelve 20-sentence lists with equal phonemic content were created. Using these lists, Reception Thresholds for Sentences (RTSs), defined as the signal-to-noise ratio at which sentences were repeated correctly 50 % of the time,were obtained. RTSs were measured under headphones in quiet and in three noise conditions. For the noise conditions,speech was presented from the front and noise was processed to simulate origination from the front,the right and the left. The noise was fixed at 65 Db (A) and the speech level was adjusted adaptively. Interlist or test-retest reliability was high,suggesting that consistent results can be obtained using any list. Confidence intervals were measured and reported. Norms obtained using the CHINT and MHINT are comparable to those for the English HINT.