Brief History of Chinese Romanization
Searching for and using materials written in a non-Roman alphabet or ideographs presents special challenges for library users. Chinese can be more challenging than most.
Until 1999 the Library of Congress, who sets the standard for libraries in the United States, used the Wade-Giles transliteration system. This system, developed by Sir Thomas Francis Wade in the mid-nineteenth century and modified by Herbert Allen Giles in 1912, remained the world standard for most of the 20th century. The Wade-Giles system was based on pronunciation from nonstandard speech sounds and contains symbols that represent different sounds and sometimes different symbols for the same sound.
Pinyin, the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet based on the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, was created by the Committee on Language Reform in China in 1956 and further modified in 1958. In 1979 the State Council of the People's Republic of China for Romanization prescribed that Pinyin would be used for all translated publications for English speaking countries.