Romanisering

Romanisering, or romanization, is the process of rendering a language that uses a non-Latin script into the Latin alphabet, or of converting proper names and geographical terms into Latin script. It encompasses both transliteration (mapping written characters from one script to corresponding characters in another) and transcription (representing the pronunciation of words in a different script). The practice is widely used to enable reading, pronunciation guides, indexing, and international communication.

Transliteration aims to preserve the original written form as much as possible, often using fixed schemes such as ISO standards. Transcription emphasizes phonology, producing a readable representation of how a word sounds in the target language. In practice, many romanization systems mix these goals, depending on the language and the context. Major languages have well-established schemes: Mandarin Chinese uses Pinyin (Beijing is Bejing in non-diacritic forms; Pinyin with tone marks indicates pitch); Russian uses ISO 9 or other Cyrillic-to-Latin schemes; Japanese has Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki, and Nihon-shiki; Korean uses the Revised Romanization of Korean; Greek and Arabic likewise have standardized systems such as ISO or ALA-LC variants.

Romanisering serves scholarly, educational, bibliographic, governmental, and technological needs. It facilitates dictionary compilation, travel and shipping, passport issuance, and keyword search in databases and on the web. In digital contexts, systems often favor ASCII-only outputs, leading to simplifications or diacritics omissions, which can reduce accuracy. Because many languages have multiple competing standards, romanization can vary by region, institution, or purpose, potentially causing inconsistency across texts and data.