History of Chinese Romanization 中文罗马化历程

History of Chinese Romanization中文的拉丁化表示法——拼音Chinese romanization refers to the phonetic representation of Chinese language material in the Roman alphabet. Sporadic romanization of Chinese words started way before the Renaissance, when westerners like Marco Polo came into contact with the Chinese culture and brought back Chinese goods like silk, tea, porcelain, etc. as well as stories about China's people, places and natural wonders.中文的拉丁化表示法是指用罗马字母来表示中文的语音。

早在西方文艺复兴发生前，像马可·波罗这样的西方人开始接触中国文化，并带回许多中国商品，如丝绸，茶叶，瓷器等，同时也在西方传播着有关中国的人民，地方以及自然奇观的故事。

与此同时，中文的拉丁化现象已经零星出现。

Systematic Chinese romanization started in the early 17th century by Jesuit priests like Matteo Ricci (1552-1610, Italian), Nicolas Trigault (1577-1628, French) and others as they came to China to learn the Chinese language and to promote Christianity. Their efforts were later joined by other westerners. In 1867, Thomas F. Wade, the Chinese language secretary in the British embassy to China published a book called Yuyan Zi Er Ji (语言自迩集) ["Teach Yourself Chinese"], in which he used a romanization system adapted from the 1815 system by the English priest R. Morrison. Forty-five years later, H. A. Giles published his Chinese English Dictionary, in which he used Thomas Wade's romanization system with slight modifications. This is how the famous Wade-Giles system came about.系统性的中文拉丁化进程开始于17世纪初。

当时，一些西方耶稣会教士，如利玛窦（1552-1610，意大利），金尼阁（1577年至1628年，法国）等人来到中国，为了促进基督教在中国的传播他们开始认真学习中文。

他们的努力后来得到了其他西方人的大力支持和效仿。

1867年，在华英国大使馆的中文秘书托马斯·韦德出版了一本书叫《语言自迩集》[“自学中国”]，在这本书中，他运用了一个由英国牧师马礼逊河在1815年改编的罗马拼音系统。

四十五年后，翟理斯出版了他的《华英字典》，其中他对威妥玛的标音系统又略加改良，形成了“威妥玛-翟理斯式” (Wade-Giles)。

Realizing that the traditional Chinese writing system hampers China'smass education, many Chinese intellectuals launched a Chinese romanization movement of their own early this century. Fine scholars like Lu Xun (鲁迅), Hu Shi (胡适), Li Jinxi (黎锦熙), Lin Yutang (林语堂), Zhao Yuanren (赵元任), Qian Xuantong (钱玄同), etc., were all ardent supporters and participants of this movement. Numerous designs were proposed from 1897 onward. This effort culminated in 1928, when the Education Ministry of the nationalist government announced theFaashyh, which was designed by Zhao Yuanren, the best linguist China has ever produced, and decreed that it would be used as the standard for Chinese romanization. Gwoyeu Romatzyh (国语罗马字) does not use any diacritic tone marks, but employs an ingeniously designed set of tonal spellings to mark tones. It has been very popular among teachers and students of the Chinese language in the US, though because of decades of war and turmoil and a general lack of foresight, it has never enjoyed much popular usage inside China.十九世纪末二十世纪初期，中国一批先进的知识分子意识到中国传统的书写系统阻碍了中国教育的大众普及，于是发起了一场汉字拉丁化运动。

当时一些大学者如鲁迅、胡适、黎锦熙、林语堂、赵元任、钱玄同等都是热心的支持者和这场运动的参与者。

众多的提案都是从1897年起被提出的。

经过不懈的努力，终于在1928年，当时国民政府教育部公布了“国语罗马字拼音法式”、这是由中国最优秀的语言学家赵元任提出制订的。

这也是中国推行国语和供一切注音用的第一个法定的拉丁字母拼音方案。

“国语罗马字”不使用任何音调符号标注声调，采用了一套巧妙设计的变化拼法（注音字母）的办法来表示声调。

这套方法深受美国教师和学生欢迎。

但在中国，由于几十年的战争和动荡，以及当时中国人名普遍缺乏远见的，以至于“注音字母”这种方法从来没有在中国国普及开来。

At the same time, many communist revolutionaries were also sympathetic with the idea of romanization. In 1931, Qu Qiubai's Latinhua xinwenz (瞿秋白的拉丁化新文字) was adopted at a conference by Chinese nationals in the Soviet far east. This scheme has no provision for marking tones, and is therefore much simpler than Gwoyeu Romatzyh. It was used to educate workers in the Soviet far east, and was also extensively used in Yan'an (延安), the base and stronghold of the Chinese communist revolution. After 1949, the communist government set up a committee to study the issue of Chinese romanization. After years of deliberation, a new scheme called Hanyu Pinyin Fang'an (汉语拼音方案) was announced in 1958. For many years, Hanyu Pinyin was used mainly to replace Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符号) as a pronunciation guide in elementary education and in dictionaries.In the meantime, Wade-Giles continued to be used in English language publications until 1979, when the International Standard Organization passed a resolution adopting Hanyu Pinyin as the international standard for Chinese romanization.In addition to the four romanization systems mentioned above, there is another Chinese romanization system called the Yale system. This system was created in 1948 and first used in a textbook called Speak Chinese. It was popular in some American institutions where Chinese was taught due to its relative simplicity.In 1986, Taiwan's Education Ministry announced a simplified version of Gwoyeu Romatzyh. This system abandons the tonal spellings of Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and instead uses the same tone marks as Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao to mark tones.None of the above mentioned romanization systems have any provision for distinguishing homophonous characters. But in 1991, this author published a simple Chinese word processor called CWP, which uses a modified version of Pinyin called CWP Pinyin. In addition to simplification of Pinyin and removal all the diacritical marks, this Pinyin system is capable of "spelling out" every single character.Appendix I is a comparison of the seven romanization systems discussed above.与此同时，许多共产主义的革命者也同情罗马的想法。