Reference library
Comprehensive resource covering the fundamentals and technical aspects of romanizing scripts.
Romanization fundamentals encompass the core principles and practices of converting non-Latin scripts into the Latin alphabet. This guide covers historical development, major systems, character mappings, pronunciation representation, and practical applications for language technology.
The same name or word can appear in several different Roman-letter spellings. 北京 may be written Beijing, Peking, or Pei-ching. The Japanese word し may become shi or si. 부산 appears officially as Busan, while older sources commonly use Pusan. The Russian name Чайковский may appear as Čajkovskij, Chaĭkovskiĭ, Chaykovskiy, or the established English form […]
A romanized word may look correct on screen while being stored incorrectly underneath. The character é, for example, can be encoded as one precomposed Unicode character or as the letter e followed by a combining acute accent. These forms may render identically, but software that compares their raw code-unit sequences can treat them as different […]
Romanization converts scripts such as Cyrillic, Arabic, or Chinese into the Latin alphabet, facilitating pronunciation, indexing, and data processing. This guide explains its principles, history, major systems, and practical relevance.
Diacritics play a crucial role in many romanization schemes, allowing precise phonological representation of non‑Latin scripts. This article explains why diacritics are employed, outlines the governing standards, and offers practical guidance for their use.
This article explains the difference between ASCII‑only and diacritic‑based Romanization, outlines their histories, character mappings, rules, and practical usage. It also compares them with other transliteration standards and offers tools for conversion.
Learn how to romanize names from non-Latin scripts into English using official systems like ALA-LC and BGN/PCGN. This guide covers name order, spacing, passport considerations, and common variants for global consistency.
Learn how to romanize English names correctly, including native script handling, family name placement, hyphenation rules, and passport considerations. This guide covers official systems, common variants, and historical spellings for accurate name representation.
Romanization systems often employ diacritics to accurately represent sounds absent in the Latin alphabet, maintain reversibility, and indicate tones or stress. This article explores the rationale, character tables, rules, and comparisons of major diacritic-based systems like Pinyin, IAST, and ISO 9.
This article explains the distinction between romanization and phonetic transcription for English, covering history, character tables, rules, usage, advantages, and limitations, with practical examples and scholarly references.