ALA-LC (
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
) is a set of standards for
romanization
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, 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, a ...
, the representation of text in other
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
s using the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...
.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by North American libraries and the British Library (for acquisitions since 1975)
[Searching for Cyrillic items in the catalogues of the British Library: guidelines and transliteration tables]
and in publications throughout the English-speaking world.
The
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules require catalogers to romanize access points from their non-Roman originals. However, as the
MARC standards
MARC (machine-readable cataloging) standards are a set of digital formats for the description of items catalogued by libraries, such as books, DVDs, and digital resources. Computerized library catalogs and library management software need to str ...
have been expanded to allow records containing
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
characters,
many cataloguers now include bibliographic data in both Roman and original scripts. The emerging
Resource Description and Access continues many of AACR's recommendations but refers to the process as "
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...
" rather than "Romanization."
Scripts
The ALA-LC Romanization includes over 70 romanization tables. Here are some examples of tables:
* A
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, th ...
Romanization table was created by the LC and ALA in 2012 and subsequently approved by the Cherokee Tri-Council meeting in
Cherokee, North Carolina
Cherokee ( chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, translit=Tsalagi) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Swain and Jackson counties in Western North Carolina, United States, within the Qualla Boundary land trust. Cherokee is located in the Oconaluftee River ...
. It was the first ALA-LC Romanization table for a Native American syllabary.
* The
Chinese Romanization table used the
Wade–Giles
Wade–Giles () is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's '' Chinese–English Dictionary'' o ...
transliteration system until 1997, when the Library of Congress (LC) announced a decision to switch to the
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
system.
See also
*
ALA-LC romanization for Russian
*
Devanagari transliteration
*
Romanization of Arabic
*
Romanization of Armenian
*
Romanization of Belarusian
Romanization or Latinization of Belarusian is any system for transliterating written Belarusian from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
Standard systems for romanizing Belarusian
Standard systems for romanizing Belarusian include:
*BGN/PCGN roma ...
*
Romanization of Bulgarian
*
Romanization of Khmer
The romanization of Khmer is a representation of the Khmer (Cambodian) language using letters of the Latin alphabet. This is most commonly done with Khmer proper nouns, such as names of people and geographical names, as in a gazetteer.
Romaniz ...
*
Romanization of Georgian
*
Romanization of Persian
*
Romanization of Ukrainian
The romanization of Ukrainian, or Latinization of Ukrainian, is the representation of the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, which is based on the Cyrillic script. Romanization may be ...
*
Romanization of Urdu
References
External links
ALA-LC Romanization Tables
{{Romanization
Library cataloging and classification