Romanization

Romanization is the set of methods for rendering writing systems that use non-Latin scripts into the Latin alphabet. It can refer to transliteration, which maps characters to corresponding letters, or to transcription, which represents pronunciation more directly regardless of letter-for-letter correspondence. Romanization is used to aid pronunciation, literacy, international communication, data processing, and scholarly study of languages.

There is no single universal romanization scheme; most languages have several competing systems developed at different times by linguists, governments, or libraries. Choice of system depends on purpose: linguistic research often favors reversible transliteration with diacritics; everyday use and publishing favor easier-to-read forms; library cataloging follows standards such as ISO and ALA-LC.

Notable schemes include Mandarin Chinese, where Pinyin is dominant today, with Wade-Giles and Yale as historical alternatives. Japanese uses Hepburn as a common form, alongside Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki. Korean employs the Revised Romanization of Korean, while McCune-Reischauer remains a historical standard. For Cyrillic languages, ISO 9 provides a systematic transliteration, with ALA-LC and other library-oriented schemes in wide use. Arabic transliteration is guided by ISO 233, DIN 31635, and ALA-LC. Hindi and Sanskrit commonly use IAST, with ITRANS serving digital encoding needs. Greek uses ISO 843 in its transliteration.

Challenges include representing phonemes absent in Latin, diacritic handling, and achieving consistency across contexts. In computing and data exchange, diacritics are often omitted, creating ambiguity. Standards bodies such as ISO and ALA-LC publish tables to support consistent transliteration and indexing across languages and libraries.