Need Chinese Translation?
Find language Translators
Forum
Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages due to the Chinese's own lack of phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries in the 16th century.
Today the most common romanization standard for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音/汉语拼音), often known simply as Pinyin, introduced in 1956 by the People's Republic of China, later adopted by Singapore (see Chinese language romanization in Singapore). Pinyin is almost universally employed now for teaching standard spoken Chinese in schools and universities across North America, Australia and Europe.
The second-most common romanization system, the Wade-Giles, was invented by Thomas Wade in 1859, later modified by Herbert Giles in 1892. As it approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels (hence an Anglicization), it may be particularly helpful for beginner speakers of native English background. Wade-Giles is found in academic use in the United States, particularly before the 1980s, and until recently was widely used in Taiwan (Taipei city now officially uses Hanyu Pinyin and the rest of the island officially uses Tōngyòng Pinyin 通用拼音/通用拼音).
When used within European texts, the tone transcriptions in both pinyin and Wade-Giles are often left out for simplicity; Wade-Giles' extensive use of apostrophes is also usually omitted. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with ‘Beijing’ than they will be with ‘Běijīng’ (pinyin), and with ‘Taipei’ than ‘T'ai²-pei³’ (Wade-Giles).
Translation Agency | Spanish Translation | French Translation | German Translation | Japanese Translation | Translater |
chinese translation chinese chinese food chinese symbols chinese new year learn chinese china hong kong chinese zodiac great wall of china ancient china chinese calendar chinese new year 2007 china airlines map of china china town chinese culture made in china chinese democracy chinese dragon chinese art