CZ:Romanization/Chinese

The is a draft recommendation on how to romanize Chinese words and names within Citizendium. It is not official Citizendium policy. You may edit this as you would any other page within this site. Discussion of the issues may take place on the talk page.

Scope

Here we are discussing transliteration of Chinese script (both simplified and traditional script) known in Chinese as Hanzi (漢字 or 汉字). Scripts used by ethnic groups in China that different form Hanzi (such as Mongolian script or Manchurian script) can be discussed on their own pages.

Definition of the issue

Chinese text, written in Chinese writing, is illegible to most English speaking people. When discussing topics relating to China or Chinese issues, we need to write the Chinese words using the Roman alphabet. Chinese words have more than one pronunciation, with various dialects of Chinese spoken in different regions. There is more than one way established way to transliterate each dialect. In addition, political situations in China have lead to certain sections of the Chinese community favouring one for of transliteration over another. In order to avoid confusion, Citizendium should be consistent in its method or Romanization. In order to avoid bias, the point of view of various political factions must be considered in a balanced manner.

Transcribe and transliterate not translate

This page will describe how to change text form Chinese script to Roman script. The resultant text will still be in the Chinese language. How to translate from Chinese to English or other languages is irrelevant to this page and may be discussed elsewhere.

Romanization not Anglicization

The objective is to map Chinese language to Roman script. It is not intended to map to English pronunciation of Roman script. There are sounds in English that do not exist in Chinese and vice-versa. Thus some characters will be pronounced differently in romanized Chinese form their standard English pronunciation. Different forms of romanization map the extra sounds in different ways.

English or Chinese choice irrelevant

It is not our objective here to decide on wither to use English names for Chinese things or English names. We are not deciding whither to use 'Confucius' or 'Kǒng Fūzǐ' here. Instead we are discussing wither 孔夫子 transcribes as Kǒng Fūzǐ (pinyin) or K'ung-fu-tzu (Wade-Giles) or something else. The discussion as to whither to choose Anglicized names or Chinese names can be done else where. Here we will concentrate only on how to write the Chinese name in Chinese using Roman script.

Information

Main established methods of Romanization

There are established transliteration methods for most dialects of Chinese.

Mandarin (Pǔtōnghuà)

This is the majority dialect of Chinese. Even where Mandarin is not the main dialect, a significant proportion of Chinese speaking people will have it as a second language. The established transliteration methods for Mandarin Chinese are:

• Hanyu Pinyin (ISO standard)
• EFEO
• Gwoyeu Romatzyh
• Latinxua Sin Wenz
• Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II
• Chinese Postal Map Romanization
• Tongyong Pinyin
• Wade-Giles
• Mandarin Yale
• Legge romanization
• Simplified Wade

Cantonese

• Guangdong Romanization
• Hong Kong Government
• Jyutping
• Meyer-Wempe
• Sidney Lau
• S. L. Wong (phonetic symbols)
• S. L. Wong (romanisation)
• Standard Cantonese Pinyin
• Standard Romanization
• Cantonese Yale
• Barnett-Chao

Wu

• Long-short (romanization)

Min Nan

Taiwanese, Amoy, and related

• Pe̍h-oē-jī

Hainanese

• Hainanhua Pinyin Fang'an

Teochew

• Peng'im

Min Dong: Fuzhou dialect

• Foochow Romanized

Hakka

Moiyan dialect

• Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an

Siyen dialect

• Phak-fa-sṳ

Policy (Draft)

Selection

The following can be used to select a preferred transliteration method. It does not forbid using multiple or alternative transliterations where appropriate, but rather insists that one form of transliteration should be preferred or that one transliteration should be preferentially positioned or ordered.

Topics that transcend regional or dialect boundaries

Primary preference: Hànyǔ pīnyīn: Default to the largest region and dialect groups preference. For Chinese the largest region is the PRC and the largest dialect is Mandarin. The preferred form of transliteration here is Hanyu Pinyin.

Secondary preference: Wade-Gyles: this should be given after the Pinyin if known but is not required.

Tertiary preference: Other forms may be given as secondary or tertiary transliterations if space permits but are not necessary.

Avoid using: To be added.

Topics specific to a region

Where the topic of the transliteration concerns a specified region, preference should be given to that region's usual transliteration method. For example, the transliteration of the name of the Mayor of Beijing is specific to the PRC and so Singapore transliteration preferences are irrelevant to that topic.

People's Republic of China

Primary preference: Hànyǔ pīnyīn: As Mandarin is the majority and official language in this region we should default to Hanyu pinyin first.

Secondary preference: This depends on whither the topic is specific to a particular dialect. If a non Mandarin dialect is relevant to the topic then it should be given in addition to Hanyu Pinyin according to the dialect specific rules below.

Tertiary preference: Wade-Gyles and this should be given after the Pinyin if known but is not required. Other forms may be given as secondary or tertiary transliterations if space permits but are not necessary.

Avoid using: To be added.

Topics specific to a dialect

Regional preferences should override dialect preferences. However, where regional and dialect specific transliterations differ, the dialect specific transliteration may be given as a secondary form.

Mandarin

Primary preference: Hanyu Pinyin

Secondary preference: Wade-Gyles

Style guides

Just as English people require style guides when writing English, guides are also useful for transliterated text. The following style guides provide a consistent formate to Citizendium pages where the transliteration method states no preference.