Romanization.org is an independent reference and tool platform dedicated to romanization, transliteration, writing systems, and the conversion of non-Latin scripts into Roman letters.
Our goal is to make complex writing systems and romanization standards easier to understand. We publish practical guides, comparison tables, character charts, and interactive tools for students, language learners, researchers, editors, librarians, developers, travelers, genealogists, and anyone working with multilingual names or text.
What Is Romanization?
Romanization is the process of representing a language normally written in another script using the Roman, or Latin, alphabet. Examples include writing Chinese characters in Pinyin, Japanese kana in Romaji, Korean Hangul using Revised Romanization, or Russian Cyrillic using a Latin transliteration system.
Romanization may appear straightforward, but there is rarely one universal method. A language can have several systems developed for different purposes, including pronunciation guidance, academic research, library cataloging, passports, maps, historical records, and digital data processing.
For example, Japanese may be romanized using Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki, or Nihon-shiki. Korean may use Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer, or Yale. Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, and Indic scripts also have multiple competing or specialized systems.
Romanization.org helps explain these differences clearly.
What We Publish
Our content is organized around languages, scripts, standards, and practical use cases. Resources may include:
- Introductions to major romanization and transliteration systems
- Character-by-character romanization tables
- Comparisons between competing standards
- Guides for romanizing personal and geographic names
- Explanations of diacritics, tone marks, spacing, and capitalization
- Information about standards used in libraries, maps, academic citations, and databases
- Interactive converters for selected languages and writing systems
- Developer resources for Unicode, search normalization, and multilingual data
We aim to provide more than a converted result. Where possible, our tools and guides explain which system is being used, why different spellings may appear, and what limitations users should consider.
Our Approach
Romanization.org prioritizes clarity, transparency, and responsible use.
We distinguish between romanization, transliteration, transcription, translation, and pronunciation. These terms are related, but they are not interchangeable. A transliteration may represent the spelling of the original script without reproducing its exact pronunciation. A pronunciation-based system may be easier to read but less reversible.
When discussing an established system, we aim to identify its purpose, governing standard, common applications, important rules, and known limitations. We consult recognized linguistic references, official standards, language authorities, library tables, Unicode documentation, and other credible sources where appropriate.
Articles may be updated as standards, official guidance, or technical implementations change.
Romanization Tools
Our tools are designed for education, research, comparison, and general reference. Depending on the language, users may be able to:
- Convert native-script text into Roman letters
- Compare results from multiple romanization systems
- Preserve or remove diacritics
- Convert tone numbers into tone marks
- Review character or syllable mappings
- Generate simplified ASCII versions
- Copy or export converted text
Automated romanization is not always able to resolve pronunciation, meaning, name preferences, regional conventions, or historical spelling. For that reason, results should be reviewed carefully when used in legal documents, passports, immigration forms, academic publications, official maps, or identity records.
Personal Names and Identity
The romanization of a personal name is not merely a technical conversion. Individuals may use established spellings that differ from the output of an official or automated system.
Romanization.org does not determine the correct identity, preferred spelling, or legal form of a person’s name. When an individual has a documented or self-identified Roman-letter spelling, that form should generally take priority over an automatically generated version.
Our Independence
Romanization.org is an independent publication. It is not an official representative of ISO, Unicode, the Library of Congress, national language authorities, passport agencies, mapping organizations, or any other standards body mentioned on the website.
References to institutions, standards, products, and romanization systems are provided for informational and educational purposes. Their names remain the property of their respective owners.
The current website may also discuss the historical use of the Romanization.org domain. Such discussion does not imply that the present publication is operated by, endorsed by, or officially connected with any previous owner, project, database, institution, or contributor associated with the domain.
Corrections and Contributions
Romanization involves detailed rules, language-specific exceptions, and standards that can change over time. We welcome thoughtful corrections from linguists, native speakers, librarians, translators, developers, researchers, and readers.
When reporting an issue, please include the relevant language, script, romanization system, example text, expected result, and a supporting source when available.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help people move between writing systems without losing sight of language, standards, context, and identity.
Romanization.org exists to make scripts more accessible, explain why Roman-letter spellings differ, and provide reliable starting points for understanding how names, words, and places are represented across languages.