User:LiangHH/Chinese Romanization

This project is now listed at List of proposed projects

Many names and words which come from Chinese have a lousy Roman-script conversion. This is because there is hardly any knowledge on Chinese language in the Western world. With this project I want to

create a template to call atenttion of proper dealing with Chinese names and words from China
create a group, willing to correct articles
provide an easy-to-understand quick info page for laymen (since my following example is probably too inconvenient)

Problems[edit]

Let's list possible mistakes and make it clear by using an Example, transcribing the name of en ancient emperor named 秦 (Qín).

1. Rough tonal Romanization[edit]

Chinese cannot simply be transliterated by pronunciation in the Western ear. Even for native Chinese its impossible to guess the right meaning out of something like this. With my project I want mainly promote transcription using the official Romanization Pinyin which luckily was set as a standard in China (and even the US) since there were plenty of romanizations creating a lot of confusion. In times when Westerners had no idea about Chinese language and there existed no agreement on how to write Chinese in Latin, words were written like that. Historical names are still known by some unmethodical romanization or even of southern dialects, since Western world first landed with southern China. An example is Peking which was a dialect. It luckily was changed now to Beijing in English.

- Qín-example: Tshin
  The Chinese name 秦 could be written like Chin/Tshin/Dshin... depending on the transcriber's idea of the letter's sounds which varies from language to language.
- Wikipedia-example: Taichi, Taoism
- Other exmaples: Sichuan was named Szechuan or Szechwan, Laozi was Lao Tsu, Lao Tse, or Laotze

2. Pinyin without tones[edit]

This is the most common way to romanize Chinese nowadays, at least trying to use pinyin, but putting no tones is a big mistake since Pinyin doesn#t work that way. It's only correct with tones. This will be the primary work on Wikipedia: Many articles on Chinese subjects romanize Characters without tones.

- Qín-example: Qin
  "Qin" still could be one out of 20 different totally different characters (亲侵钦衾秦勤琴禽擒芹噙芩嗪锓檎螓寝沁揿 or 吣)
  So it should contain Pinyin with its correct tone mark
- Wikipedia-example: Chinese Malaysian, Indonesian Chinese, Thai Chinese, Chinese Cambodian, Chinese Cuban, Chinese Filipino, The Indonesian Ethnic Chinese and the view of nationhood; Tongzhi Emperor... (to be continued)

3. No Chinese character[edit]

Pinyin with tones is good and in most cases maybe enough. To be more exact, of course the original Chinese characters are needed.

- Qín-example: Qin (Pinyin: Qín)
  It still can be one of 12 characters, but most Chinese won't have to think long to guess the meaning. However, including the Chinese character would be perfect
- Wikipedia-example: Chang Tsai, Kao Tzu

4. Complete with Pinyin and Characters[edit]

This makes a transliteration perfect as it has correct Pinyin for the non-Chinese to pronounce it correctly and Chinese characters for those, more familiar to Chinese.

- Qín-example: Qin (Chinese: 秦; Pinyin: Qín)

Helpful is also using templates as in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(China-related_articles)#Templates which will look like

Qin (Chinese: 秦; pinyin: Qín)

What I need[edit]

Someone willing to create a template like "This article contains improper Chinese romanization. Please consider the Style manual for articles related to China". I tried my luck with templates and I failed... ;)
Someone with an idea of a quick information page for the common user not too familiar to Wiki-html and Chinese language. Take informations out of this page, maybe mine and others if known. It must be made clear...

What is pinyin
Why it's so important
How to put it into Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles) is way too complex to serve as a quick manual for adding informations to a page!

What else can be done? Start working with some you are able to do (technical tools welcome) and contribute it here.

Templates[edit]

Thanks to Bibliomaniac15 and Jwanders we not have some helpful templates to call attention to faulty articles: User:Jwanders/ChineseTemplates