romanize

Romanize is a term used to describe the process of converting text from a non-Latin script into the Latin alphabet, or to render the sounds of a language using Latin letters. In practice, romanization can refer to transliteration, which aims to map letters from one script to corresponding letters in another, and transcription, which aims to reproduce pronunciation rather than exact spelling.

Two related concepts are commonly distinguished. Transliteration preserves the original spelling as closely as possible, producing a reversible representation of the source script. Transcription focuses on how the language sounds and often sacrifices one-to-one letter mapping to better reflect pronunciation in the target language. Different languages have developed multiple romanization systems to suit differing goals, such as scholarly precision, practical readability, or alphabetical indexing.

Widely used examples include Japanese romaji (with Hepburn as common in English-language materials and Kunrei-shiki as a more systematic alternative), Chinese pinyin, Korean revised romanization, and Cyrillic-script romanizations produced under standards such as ISO 9 or library-oriented schemes like ALA-LC. In Arabic and other scripts, standardized transcriptions exist (for example, DIN 31635 or ISO 233) to aid academic and administrative uses. In library and information sciences, romanization schemes are formalized for cataloging and interoperability (often following national or international standards like MARC or ISO).

Romanization supports international communication, searchability, and data integration but faces challenges such as dialectal variation, evolving norms, loss of diacritics, and political or cultural sensitivities that influence which system is preferred in a given context.