In fact in my experience FineReader (FR) works quite poorly with pinyin. I've had quite a fight some time ago when I was OCRing a Chinese testbook.
I did create a custom language, but it seems that for some reason FR is not able to use some characters with 3rd tone marks (carron) such as ǎ, ǐ, ǔ. However I noticed that I can make it kind of work by substituting letters with carron by letters with breve (ǎ with ă) :-/
ǎ U01D4 with U0103
ǐ U01D0 with U012D
ǔ U01D4 with U016D
it never recognizes ǚ U01DA as well. FR also does not accept some more rare combinations that I've never seen - ǖ U016D, ǘ 01D8, ǜ U01D6 (I could not find any instances of ǖ in CEDICT, while there are a few characters using ǘ and ǜ)
So OCR, then manually go through many omissions, then find-replace stop-gap letters using breve with the correct ones... lots of fun.
However the idea about using CEDICT as a dictionary could be useful - I had not thought about it. FR will just be able to use the text file if I point to it as a dictionary for my custom language? Hm, or maybe not. In any case - in CEDICT pinyin tones are indicated by numbers. Maybe it can be used a a dictionary for the scan of a normal text. Maybe.
As for Hollins - you mean that sometimes Chinese refer to Westerners using a Chinese surname similar to their Western one? Or at least starting with the same sound? Then will have to use 何I guess.
Daniel - as the recording uses it, I could use your best guess. Though it will be a bad luck if anybody then uses this info to transcribe Daniel... So might rather leave it as is. and/or add a footnote about this.
And probably do not waste time reading the pinyin - I'll go the OCR road - luckily there is not too much to edit. The reference lists grow quite long only in the last 2 modules (and I'm done with Society already

EDITED: well the scaned books are from different quality copies. Here is what I got for Travel module

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1. A: WSman zSnme chěnghu nín
hlo ne?
B: Lái zhèli cǎngaān f&ngwènde rén dǒu Jiào wS LXo Wáng.
2. A: Nín xilng zhèijiàn shì
zlnme ánp&i bí.1 i&o hSo?
B: W3 xiSng zuì hio dSng vS he Shànghii fǎngmian li&nxí yíxià zài shuò.
3. A: Tīngshuǒ nín duì zhèi yídàìl-
de fSngy&n hen y5u yinjiū.
It's quicker to edit manually the automatic conversion by DimSum. Or even type it from the book.