A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. Methods of romanization include transliteration, representing written text, and transcription, representing the spoken word. The latter can be subdivided into phonological transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision. Each romanization has its own set of rules for pronunciation of the romanized words.

In antiquity, Romanization or Latinization was also the spread of Roman culture and language.

To romanize is to transliterate or transcribe a language into the Roman alphabet. This process is most commonly associated with the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages (CJK). Cyrillization is the similar process of representing a language using the Cyrillic alphabet.

Also spelled romanisation and latinisation.

Methods of romanization

Transliteration

If the romanization attempts to transliterate the original script, the guiding principle is a one-to-one mapping of characters in the source language into the target script, with less emphasis on how the result sounds when pronounced according to the reader's language. For example, the Nihon-shiki romanization of Japanese allows the informed reader to reconstruct the original Japanese kana syllables with 100% accuracy, but is not readable without prior study.

Transcription

Phonological

However, most romanizations are intended for the casual reader, who is unfamiliar with the intricacies of the original script and is more interested in pronouncing the source language. Such romanizations follow the principle of phonological transcription and attempt to render the significant sounds (phonemes) of the original as faithfully as possible in the target language. The popular Hepburn romanization of Japanese is an example of a transcriptive romanization designed for English speakers.

Phonetic

A phonetic conversion goes one step further and attempts to depict all phones in the source language, sacrificing legibility if necessary by using characters or conventions not found in the target script. The International Phonetic Alphabet is the most common system of phonetic transcription.

Tradeoffs

For most language pairs, building a usable romanization involves tradeoffs between the two extremes. Pure transcriptions are generally not possible, as the source language usually contains sounds and distinctions not found in target language, but which must be denoted to achieve comprehensibility.

In general, outside a limited audience of scholars, romanizations tend to lean more towards transcription. As an example, consider the Japanese martial art 柔術: the Nihon-shiki romanization zyūzyutu may allow an expert to reconstruct the kana syllables じゅうじゅつ, but most people would find the Hepburn version jūjutsu more pronounceable.

Romanization of specific writing systems

Arabic

The Arabic alphabet is used to write Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Romanization standards include:

• Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (1936): http://www.dmg-web.de/ Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. Is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary (ISBN 0879500034)
• BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institute http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
• SATTS (1970s): Developed by US military
• UNGEGN (1972): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
• DIN-31635 (1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization)
• ISO 233 (1984). Transliteration.
• Qalam (1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
• ISO 233-2 (1993). Simplified transliteration.
• Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s): Developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacritics http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
• ALA-LC (1997): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf

A table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Arabic.pdf.

Hebrew

For more details, see Hebrew alphabet and Romanization of Hebrew.

• ANSI Z39.25 (1975):
• UNGEGN (1977): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_he.pdf
• ISO 259 (1984): Transliteration.
• ISO 259-2 (1994): Simplified transliteration.
• ISO/DIS 259-3: Phonemic transcription.
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/hebrew.pdf

Brahmic scripts

The Brahmic family of abugidas is used for languages of the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia. There is a long tradition in the west to study Sanskrit and other Indic texts in Latin transliteration. Various transliteration conventions have been used for Indic scripts since the time of Sir William Jones. A comparison of some of them is provided here: http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3part2.html

• ISO 15919 (2001): A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script. See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is identical to the academic standard, IAST: "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", and to the United States Library of Congress standard, ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/hindi.pdf
• Harvard-Kyoto: Uses upper and lower case and doubling of letters, to avoid the use of diacritics, and to restrict the range to 7-bit ASCII.
• ITRANS: a transliteration scheme into 7-bit ASCII created by Avinash Chopde that used to be prevalent on Usenet.
• ASTHA: "Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration for HTML", made in Argentina, also into 7-bit ASCII http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/english/sanskrit/sanskrit3.html

See also ISCII (1988).

Chinese

Romanization of Chinese, in particular, has proved a very difficult problem, although the issue is further complicated by political considerations. Another complication is the fact that Mandarin is not written phonetically, but rather written as ideograms. Because of this, most romanization tables convert not directly from the Chinese characters but from the underlying Zhuyin pronunciation. See also: http://www.iqchina.com/going/PinYin2.asp http://www.romanization.com/

Standard Mandarin

• ALA-LC: Used to be similar to Wade-Giles http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/chinese.pdf, but converted to Hanyu Pinyin since 2000 http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html
• EFEO. Developed by Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient in 19th century, used mainly in France.
• Latinxua Sinwenz (1926): Omitted tone sounds. Used mainly in the Soviet Union.
• Lessing-Othmer: Used mainly in Germany.
• Postal System Pinyin (1906): Early standard for international addresses
• Wade-Giles (1912): Transliteration. Very popular before World War II.
• Yale (1942): Created by the U.S. for battlefield communication.

Mainland China

• Hanyu Pinyin (1958): In Mainland China, Hanyu Pinyin has been used officially to romanize Mandarin for decades, primarily as a linguistic tool for teaching Standard Mandarin (the standardized Chinese spoken language) to students whose mother tongue is not Standard Mandarin, and has been adopted by much of the international community as a standard for writing Chinese words and names in the Roman alphabet. The value of Hanyu Pinyin in education in China lies in the fact that China, like any other populated area with comparable area and population, has literally thousands of distinct dialects, though there is just one common written language and one common standardized spoken form.
• ISO 7098 (1991): Very similar to Hanyu Pinyin.

Taiwan (Republic of China)

• Gwoyeu Romatzyh: (1926): Used in mainland China before the communist takeover in 1949. Primarily used in Taiwan. Replaced by MPS II and no longer commonly used.
• Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1984): Primarily used in Taiwan. Replaced by Tongyong Pinyin and no longer commonly used.
• Tongyong Pinyin (2000): Primarily used in Taiwan. Literally means "Universal Spell Sound". Very similar to Hanyu Pinyin. Differences between the two are noted here.

Standard Cantonese

• Barnett-Chao
• Guangdong (1960)
• Hong Kong Government
• Jyutping
• Meyer-Wempe
• Sidney Lau
• Yale (1942)

Min Nan

• Guangdong (1960)
• Presbyterian Church in Taiwan

Japanese

Romanization (or, more strictly, Roman letters) in Japanese is called "rōmaji". The most common systems are:

• Hepburn (1867): transcription
• Nihon-shiki (1885): transliteration. Also adopted as (ISO 3602 Strict) in 1989.
• Kunrei-shiki (1937): transliteration. Also dopted as (ISO 3602).
• JSL (1987)
• ALA-LC: Similar to Hepburn http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf
• Wāpuro

Korean

Main article: Korean romanization

• McCune-Reischauer (1937): Transcription. Until 2002, the official system for Korean in South Korea was this system, which is still used in North Korea.
• Revised Romanization of Korean (2000): As of 2005, South Korea officially uses this system, that was approved in 2000. Road signs and textbooks are required to follow these rules as soon as possible, at a cost estimated by the government to be at least US$20 million. Proper names are still left to personal preference, but the government encourages using the new system.
• Yale (1942): This system is used mainly in academic literature.
• ALA-LC: Follows McCune-Reischauer in most cases http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf
• ISO/TR 11941 (1996): This actually is two different standards under one name: one for North Korea (DPRK) and the other for South Korea (ROK). The initial submission to the ISO was a joint effort between both countries (and was based heavily on Yale), but they could not agree on the final draft. A comparison between the two is available here: http://www.sori.org/hangul/romanizations.html#Roman_Intro

Thai

Thai, spoken in Thailand, is written with its own script, probably descended from Old Khmer, in the Brahmic family. Also see Thai alphabet.

• Royal Thai General System of Transcription:
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/thai.pdf
• ISO 11940 (1998): Transliteration

Cyrillic

In linguistics, scientific transliteration is used for both Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. This applies to Old Church Slavonic, as well as modern Slavic languages which use these alphabets.

Belarusian

The Belarusian language has been written with both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Today the Latin script (Łacinka, or Łacinica) is rarely used, although it has its advocates. Despite the existence of a native Latin alphabet, Belarusian names are usually transcribed similarly to the Russian language.

+ Examples
Lacinka	Transliterated
Homiel	Homyel'
Mahiloŭ	Mahilyow
Viciebsk	Vitsebsk
Baranavičy	Baranavichy
Žytkavičy	Zhytkavichy

• Belarusian National System of Romanization
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/beloruss.pdf
• BGN/PCGN
• ISO9

External link: Thomas T. Pederson's chart (PDF).

Russian

There is no single universally accepted system of writing Russian using the Latin script — in fact there are a huge number of such systems: some are adjusted for a particular target language (e.g. German or French), some are designed as a librarian's transliteration, some are prescribed for Russian traveller's passports; the transcription of some names is purely traditional.   All this has resulted in great reduplication of names.   E.g. the name of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky may also be written as Tchaykovsky, Tchajkovskij, Tchaikowski, Tschaikowski, Czajkowski, Čajkovskij, Čajkovski, Chajkovskij, Chaykovsky, Chaykovskiy, Chaikovski etc. Systems include:

• BGN/PCGN (1947): Transliteration system (United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use). http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/vy75/cyrillic.htm
• GOST 16876-71 (1983): From the Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the former Soviet Union. Russian abbreviation of GOsudarstvenny STandart, "the State Standard". http://www.ccl.net/cca/software/SOURCES/C/translit/phg-koi8.shtml
• United Nations standard (1987): Based on GOST. Used in the Russian Federation and increasingly in international cartographic products.
• ISO 9 (1995): Transliteration. From the International Organization for Standardization.
• ALA-LC (1997): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf
• "Volapuk" encoding (1990s): Slang term (it's not really Volapük) for a writing method that's not truly a transliteration, but used for similar goals (see article).
• Internal Wikipedia standard (2004): Derived from BGN/PCGN, documented at Transliteration of Russian into English, but essentially congruent with de-facto internet practices.

Ukrainian

Ukrainian personal names are usually transcribed phonetically; see the main article section Conventional romanization of proper names. The Ukrainian National system is used for geographic names in Ukraine.

• ALA-LC: (PDF).
• ISO 9
• Ukrainian National transliteration: (JPEG, in Ukrainian).
• Ukrainian National and BGN/PCGN systems, at the UN Working Group on Romanization Systems: (PDF).
• Thomas T. Pederson's comparison of five systems: (PDF).

Greek

Greek language includes the modern language spoken in Greece, as well as ancient Polytonic orthography. See also Greeklish.

• ISO 843 (1997): http://www.biology.uoc.gr/gvd/contents/databases/01c.htm
• ALA-LC: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/greek.pdf

Overview/Summary

The chart below shows the most common phonemic transcription romanization used for several different alphabets. While it is sufficient for many casual users, there are multiple alternatives used for each alphabet, and many exceptions. For details, consult each of the language sections below. (Because the number of Hangul characters are prohibitively large, only the first characters are provided in the following table.)

ROMANIZED	Greek	Russian (Cyrillic)	Hebrew	Arabic	Katakana	Hangul
A	A	А	ַ, ֲ, ָ	دَ, دَ, ﺍ — ﺎ, دَىا	ア
AI			י ַ
B		Б	בּ	ﺏ ﺑ ﺒ ﺐ		ㅂ
CH	Χ	Ч				ㅊ
CHI					チ
D	Δ	Д	ד	ﺩ — ﺪ, ﺽ ﺿ ﻀ ﺾ		ㄷ
DH				ﺫ — ﺬ
E	Ε	Э	, ֱ, י ֵֶ, ֵ, י ֶ		エ
F	Φ	Ф	פ (final ף )	ﻑ ﻓ ﻔ ﻒ
FU					フ
G	Γ	Г	ג			ㄱ
GH				ﻍ ﻏ ﻐ ﻎ
H			ח, ה	ﻩ ﻫ ﻬ ﻪ, ﺡ ﺣ ﺤ ﺢ		ㅎ
HA					ハ
HE					ヘ
HI					ヒ
HO					ホ
I	Η, Ι, Υ	И	ִ, י ִ	دِ	イ
IY				دِي
J				ﺝ ﺟ ﺠ ﺞ		ㅈ
JJ						ㅉ
K	Κ	К	כּ (final ךּ ), ק	ﻙ ﻛ ﻜ ﻚ		ㅋ
KA					カ
KE					ケ
KH		Х	כ (final ך )	ﺥ ﺧ ﺨ ﺦ
KI					キ
KK						ㄲ
KO					コ
KU					ク
L	Λ	Л	ל	ﻝ ﻟ ﻠ ﻞ
M	Μ	М	מ (final ם )	ﻡ ﻣ ﻤ ﻢ		ㅁ
MA					マ
ME					メ
MI					ミ
MO					モ
MU					ム
N	Ν	Н	נ (final ן )	ﻥ ﻧ ﻨ ﻦ		ㄴ
NA					ナ
NE					ネ
NI					ニ
NO					ノ
NU					ヌ
O	Ο, Ω	О	, ֳ, וֹֹ		オ
P	Π	П	פּ (final ףּ )			ㅍ
PP						ㅃ
PS	Ψ
Q				ﻕ ﻗ ﻘ ﻖ
R	Ρ	Р	ר	ﺭ — ﺮ		ㄹ
RA					ラ
RE					レ
RI					リ
RO					ロ
RU					ル
S	Σ	С	ס, שֹ	ﺱ ﺳ ﺴ ﺲ, ﺹ ﺻ ﺼ ﺺ		ㅅ
SA					サ
SE					セ
SH		Ш	ש	ﺵ ﺷ ﺸ ﺶ
SHCH		Щ
SHI					シ
SO					ソ
SS						ㅆ
SU					ス
T	Τ	Т	ט, תּ, ת	ﺕ ﺗ ﺘ ﺖ, ﻁ ﻃ ﻄ ﻂ		ㅌ
TA					タ
TE					テ
TH	Θ			ﺙ ﺛ ﺜ ﺚ
TO					ト
TS		Ц	צ (final ץ )
TSU					ツ
TT						ㄸ
U		У	, וֻּ	دُ	ウ
UW				دُو
V	B	В	ב, ו, וו
W				ﻭ — ﻮ
WA					ワ
WE					ヱ
WI					ヰ
WO					ヲ
X	Ξ
Y		Й, Ы	י	ﻱ ﻳ ﻴ ﻲ
YA		Я			ヤ
YE		Е
YO		Ё			ヨ
YU		Ю			ユ
Z	Ζ	З	ז	ﺯ — ﺰ, ﻅ ﻇ ﻈ ﻆ
ZH		Ж

External links

• UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
• U.S. Library of Congress Romanization Tables in PDF format
• Java romanization app
• One of the few printed books with lists of romanizations is ALA-LC Romanization Tables, Randall Barry (ed.), U.S. Library of Congress, 1997, ISBN 0844409405.

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