Romanization

Mandarin Chinese, like many languages, can be romanized in a number of ways; above: Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters meaning Chinese, and romanization systemsHanyu Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Wade-Giles and Yale for those characters.

In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.