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Home > Research Help > East Asian Studies > tipsforromanization
A key to successful searches is to consistently use the pinyin or Wade-Giles (C), Hepburn (J), and McCune Reischauer(K) ** for standard romanization. See below for full discussion about romanization and transitions in systems being used. Romanization tables, provided by the UCLA East Asian Library, can be printed out. They are best viewed with Internet Explorer, 4.0 or higher:
Chinese, from Wade Giles to pinyin
Chinese, from pinyin to Wade-Giles
Japanese
Korean
If you have the required software, you can search databases and web sites with character input. For contemporary studies, note that: | - "China" refers to the People's Republic of China
- You can also search "Taiwan" "Hong Kong" "Hong Kong (China)" "Chinese reunification question, 1949-" as
subject headings or keywords - In addition to "Korea," you can use "Korea (South)" and "Korea (North)" for more specific searching
- Japan is generally romanized as "Nihon" (some materials published in earlier periods may use "Nippon")
| | If you use the romanized spelling for keyword searching, this presumes that the word appears in that language in the title or elsewhere in the catalog record. Examples: Hanguk, Xianggang |
Online catalog systems do not require typing the apostrophe found in romanization of some words. For example, either character string in the pairs below will produce the same retrieval results:
| - P'yongyang:Pyongyang
- Jun'ichi:Junichi
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Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are among the languages that use a script that is different from roman letters. To represent the language, romanization standards have been developed. These standards are used in government matters, maps, science, academic writings and in libraries.
Currently there are two major changes: for Chinese, changing from the Wade-Giles system to the pinyin system; for Korean, the South Korean government has announced a new system to replace the McCune-Reischauer system.
Therefore, depending on whether you are searching the Johns Hopkins University library catalogs, other library catalogs, databases, the RLIN catalog or the WorldCat catalog, printed indexes and directories, you should be aware of which system will yield best results. Sometimes, a small number of records returned or messages like "0 records found" might be due to how words in Chinese, Japanese or Korean are being romanized in that system.
| | From the 1990's, the pinyin system of romanization has gradually replaced the Wade-Giles system for romanizing Chinese as pronounced in Mandarin. The Wade-Giles system has been traditionally used in Taiwan and outside of Asia. You will find many dictionaries, citations in bibliographies, maps, etc. that use Wade-Giles romanization to represent Chinese words in publications from the late 1800's through the 1980s.The pinyin system was developed and adapted for wide use in the People's Republic of China after 1949. The scientific community, the Board of Geographic Names, the media, and the United States State Department had adopted pinyin for use many years ago. With the technologies available to convert millions of existing catalog records, libraries too are now using pinyin. | How do I know which romanization system I am looking at? You can spot the Wade-Giles system when there are
apostrophes. Also, given names are usually linked with a hyphen. Examples: | - Ch'ing tai
- Teng Hsiao-p'ing
- Jih-pen [Japan]
- Hsiang-kang [Hong Kong]
- Hei-lung-chiang
| | On the other hand, if you see a number of words starting with"q", "x", "z", or "zh", it is likely the pinyin system. Also, keep in mind that a person's given name and names of countries and cities usually are run together. Examples: | - Qing dai
- Deng Xiaoping
- Riben [Japan]
- Xianggang [Hong Kong]
- Heilongjiang
| | Another clue is looking at how syllables end: | - Wade-Giles syllables can end with the letters "ung, ueh, ieh" (pinyin syllables do not)
- pinyin syllables can end with the corresponding letters "ong, ue, ie (Wade-Giles syllables do not)
- Wade-Giles syllables can end with the letters"en, ien" (pinyin syllables do not)
- pinyin syllables can end with the corresponding letters "an, ian" (Wade-Giles syllables do not)
| | NOTE: The RLIN database, which can be found on Eureka, and the OCLC database, which can be found as WorldCat, have converted all their records into pinyin romanization as of October, 2001. In these databases, you can find out which libraries have a particular book or journal. | | TIP: Some search pages allow you to use "OR" in the commands. To be sure to catch all the records pertaining to "politics" or "political", for example, you might try: "cheng chih" OR "zheng zhi" |
| | Libraries, dictionaries, and academia use the modified Hepburn romanization system as the standard. It is almost identical to the system used in the Kenkyusha dictionaries. | | When searching, generally you can type a single letter for vowels to represent both the short and long (macron) vowel for "a", "u", and "o". For example, typing "tori" retrieves both the "tori" (short o) meaning "bird" and the "tori" (long o) for "street" | | Double consonants are written out, such as "kippu"meaning "ticket." | For foreign words represented by katakana, be sure to spell the word as pronounced in Japanese. For example:
"computer" becomes "konpyuta" "think tank" becomes "shinku tanku" |
| | | The McCune-Reischauer system was developed for romanization of the Korean language in the 1930's. It has been widely used in dictionaries, academia, and libraries. | | Be aware, however, that the Korean government has been establishing a new standard. This new system was formally announced in July, 2000.The government will gradually implement this new standard in Korea (e.g., road signs, personal and company names) and abroad. Linguist GyongguShin of Chonnam National University has written an essay describing the new system. |
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