11/7: Romanization, past and future

Transliteration is the process of changing a language from one writing system to another. Some of the most famous transliteration systems worldwide include the pinyin system for Mandarin Chinese, the RR (Revised Romanization) system for Korean, and the Cyrillic alphabet, which can be used to transliterate many Eastern European and Western Asian languages.

Transliteration differs from translation, because the result of transliteration is not another language but another script used to represent the initial language. It differs from transcription because the goal of transcription is often to replicate sound in the easiest-to-read way for readers of the target script, while transliteration usually follows a more strict, standardized system. For example, the 'c' in the Chinese pinyin system is not pronounced like the 'c' in English, but the 'c' is always used to represent that sound in pinyin.

While many sources will equate transliteration with the term "romanization", they are not the same thing. Romanization refers to the transliteration of a language into the Latin alphabet used in English, French, and other languages. But Romanization is not the only type of transliteration that exists. For example, the Kontsevich system is the standard system for writing the Korean language in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Devanagari script is used as a common script for a variety of languages on the Indian subcontinent.

Historically, transliteration has often been used by scholars and linguists as a tool to bring languages "closer" to Western European languages like English and French, which is why so many forms of romanization exist for languages that use non-Latin alphabets. In a more globalized age, one might hope that the need to make world languages fit a Western European paradigm would be diminished. However, with the growing presence of the English language in technology and international resources, romanization has arguably grown in importance for languages that don't use the Latin alphabet. For example, the Arabic chat alphabet, commonly known as Arabizi, is a romanized version of Arabic used widely in text messaging and online chatting. In Arabizi, the sounds that don't exist as letters in the Latin alphabet are replaced by numbers. In another case, some Mandarin speakers have written about "character amnesia", especially in younger Mandarin speakers, in which speakers rely on the romanized pinyin and gradually forget exactly how to write Chinese characters. This too could be a result of technology, as typing Chinese characters on a Roman-alphabet keyboard - which is the keyboard on most global technology products - only requires using pinyin, not explicit character production.

The future of transliteration and how it is used worldwide is intertwined with the future of technology, commerce, scholarship, and other global interactions. How can we continue to cultivate intercultural connection and technological exchange while avoiding a global sliding toward reliance on the Roman alphabet? How can we retain the wealth of written scripts that exist, while acknowledging the benefits of transliteration as a tool? If you have opinions or thoughts on these questions, feel free to send in a response to be featured in a future newsletter.

For more, check out this essay on the limits of Roman transliteration in connecting a woman with her Korean heritage, this discussion of the history and future of the Chinese pinyin system, this paper on the aspects of romanizing South Asian languages, and this archive about the N|uu language, which is a critically endangered South African language spoken partly with click sounds.