Library of Congress
Pinyin Conversion Project
On Oct. 1, 2000, Pinyin became the standard
system to be used by American libraries for the romanization of Chinese ideographs
and the Chinese language.
Up to that date, the Wade-Giles system
for romanizing Chinese texts (named for Sir Thomas Francis Wade who developed
the system in 1859 and for Herbert A. Giles who modified it in 1912) had been
used in libraries throughout the United States for a century.
The Pinyin system, however, was made the official system
of romanization within the People's Republic of China in 1979 and had come to
be widely used in ensuing years throughout the international community as well
as by the United States Government, the news media and publishers. In order
to adapt to these practices, the Library of Congress, which sets the basic standards
for library cataloguing within the United States, set a date of Oct. 1, 2000
as the starting point for the official usage of Pinyin in library
cataloguing records. From that date forward Pinyin would become
the standard romanization system and the usage of the Wade-Giles system
would be discontinued.
While it is relatively simple to start cataloguing
new items using the Pinyin system, it will take some time before all older cataloguing
records are converted from Wade-Giles to Pinyin. Currently,
a retrospective conversion project is being undertaken by the Library of Congress,
OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, Inc.) and RLG (Research Library Group--the
corporate body behind RLIN (Research Library Information Network)).
For updates on the conversion project, please visit the Library of Congress
Pinyin Conversion Web site at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/pinyin.html
The Portland State Library will begin the conversion process
sometime after migrating from the Sirsi OPAC system to the III OPAC system which
is sceduled for the summer of 2002. For the present time you should continue
to use the Wade-Giles and the Pinyin systems when searching
the Portland State catalog.
The new Chinese Romanization Guidelines developed by the Library of Congress
can be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html
and http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover.html#2
The following tables are based on the "Correspondence of Wade-Giles to
Pinyin" list
included in the Library of Congress
Chinese Romanization Guidelines, and is best viewed
with Internet Explorer 4 or higher.
Wade-Giles to Zhuyin to Pinyin Conversion table
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/eastasian/ctable2.htm
Pinyin to Wade-Giles to Zhuyin Conversion Table
http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/eastasian/ctable3.htm
Pinyin to Wade-Giles Table
http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~oclccjk/pytowg.htm
Wade-Giles to Pinyin Table
http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~oclccjk/wgtopy.htm