Communication and Consistency: Romanisation of Mandarin | Archie Jacob

Communication and Consistency: The Romanisation of Mandarin

By Archie Jacob

Note from the author:

In respect of brevity, the article will only consider a relatively short period and will exclusively refer to the history of romanisation of the language known as Mandarin, and to its history in the mainland area of China, and in the context of the Anglosphere. There are multiple languages and dialects spoken in China, and in Overseas Chinese communities. There is great variation in accents and dialects being present even within the Mandarin language. In some forms of Mandarin used out of the mainland area of China, the use of traditional characters continues, with other languages being spoken by minority groups or those from non-Mandarin speaking areas. This note is to clarify that the aim of the article is to provide a short history on the changing spellings of romanisations of Mandarin as it is spoken on the mainland of China, and mainly concerns the sources of change in Western spellings of respective Mandarin words. This article will refer to Mandarin, the most widely spoken language of the mainland, as Chinese. Minority languages and the Mandarin spoken by Overseas Chinese peoples have distinct histories which are deserving of their own approaches and histories. One should also consider the comparatively fewer Chinese surnames, and the fact that they are listed before the given name in the Chinese naming tradition. In keeping with the famous example used throughout this article, the surname/family name of Mao Zedong is Mao, with his given name being Zedong. In contrast to most names in the Anglosphere, the distinguishing aspect of Chinese names is the given name, rather than the family name. Italicised words are the pinyin translation of Chinese characters, or names of works in either language.

When studying the history of China, we historians often encounter a strange lack of continuity in the names ascribed to figures, places, and events. Why do some sources and writings refer to the first leader of the People’s Republic of China as Mao Zedong, and why do others write Mao Tse-tung? In Western writings, the shift from Mao Tse-tung to Mao Zedong occurs towards the end of the twentieth century. Names of people were not the only ways in which the writing of Mandarin from the mainland had changed: Peking is now called Beijing, Chunking is now Chongqing.

But why are there so many different spellings? Though Jesuit missionaries and Chinese scholars alike had developed very early attempts, the bestknown conversions of Chinese characters (hanzi) into roman script employed the system known as WadeGiles. This system was developed in the middle of the nineteenth century and was completed by 1892 with the Chinese-English Dictionary. This dictionary was published by Herbert Giles following on the earlier work of Thomas Wade. It is from this system, best known to previous generations of historians, that translations such as Mao Tse-Tung and NanChing have been derived. Wade had worked on a number of books that laid the foundation for what became the Wade-Giles system of romanisation, which was used for the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many famous figures, place names and events, are still romanised using this system in keeping with contemporary practice, or to preserve continuity and recognition. Mao’s premier is sometimes still referred to as Chou En-lai (as he was by contemporaneous Western press), despite modern romanisation under pinyin using the spelling Zhou Enlai. The use of Wade-Giles, if in modern writings, is usually in well-known or exceptional cases. This discrepancy is still seen in the West in spellings of surnames of Chinese origin: two individuals may have their surname spelt in different ways despite their Chinese names using the same character, in this example 周.

The Wade-Giles system was also employed in a similar time period to, and influenced the development of, postal romanisation of Chinese area names. English spellings of Chinese city names were issued by the

Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service (Da

Qing huangjia haiguan zhongshuiwusi). This office, though run by the government of China, was staffed by foreigners from many nations. Before 1897, letters written had used various systems or ‘unofficial’ variations of Chinese place names, often leading to failure to deliver. However, the resultant names issued by the office after ‘standardisation’ have become well known, with such famous examples as Peking (Beijing), Kwantung (Guangdong), and

Nanking (Nanjing). Many of these names did not quite obey the rules of Wade-Giles romanisation, which is why the system of postal romanisation is considered distinct. One might still hear these names used, for example with Canton (Guangzhou, or sometimes the province of Guangdong). Given its status as a national institution and the requirement 40

of accurate spelling to ensure delivery of letters, the rulings of the postal service on pronunciation were given a certain credence. However, the unique approach to romanisation by the office did cause problems when, in the early part of the twentieth century, the organisation decided to prefer the local pronunciation of the respective name over favouring one specific dialect.

Spellings in English drastically differed depending on the language of the translator and the dialect with which they were acquainted. The variations in Chinese pronunciation and transliteration, and the differing translations of area or city names, have left their own marks in the form of numerous translations of various names for the same places. The postal service moved between taking influence from various dialects and at other times giving preference to one dialect. This resulted in multiple ‘official’ spelling changes. For some time, the office did prefer the Beijing form of pronunciation and subsequently a certain form of transliteration. This decision would be later mirrored in the development of the modern system of Pinyin. Though the influence of the postal romanisation is becoming weaker with time, many older historiographies or contemporary sources use various transliterations that were accepted at the time by the postal service. However, the spelling may change depending on the preferred spelling of the office at the time, and the individual source’s compliance or otherwise. One may still encounter dissimilarities in the names of cities: this is because these translations, depending on their year, favoured regional dialects, southern Mandarin, or northern Mandarin pronunciations in their transliteration. It is safe to say that despite continued efforts, the office did not manage to reach a consensus on which dialect to favour, nor on which romanisation to use. Lane Harris’ study of the “maddening variety of alternate spellings” provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges of regional variety and romanisation that occurred even within a somewhat unified institution.

Considering the sheer size of the Chinese nation, it is unsurprising that many dialects have developed and are still spoken even within the language of Mandarin. The prevalence and development of minority languages have their own rich histories. Though the incumbent dynasty may have spoken one variation of Mandarin, in another province the language may have sounded entirely different or may not even have been Mandarin. Despite the characters

Wipe out illiteracy 扫除文盲

of Chinese being more or less entirely standard even before simplification in the 1950s, dialects are very region-specific. To this day, Southwestern Mandarin has a huge speakership, and is not entirely interchangeable with Standard Chinese, which is derived from Standard Beijing Mandarin. There are many other iterations of distinct forms of Mandarin; however, Beijing Mandarin is often to what one refers when speaking of Mandarin or the Chinese language.

In the early years of the twentieth century, which were the final years of the Qing Dynasty, language reform was a topic of much debate. The end of the Qing Dynasty signalled a new era for China, with the end of Imperial rule and the declaration of the Republic of 1912. Language was certainly not left untouched by this drastic change. By 1932, the Ministry of Education had issued a dictionary with the aim of standardising pronunciation. This dictionary also included a romanised script, thereby facilitating the writing of the new pronunciations in most Western languages.

Despite this development, the writing of Chinese characters in the West would not adopt a form developed primarily by Chinese people until the proliferation of Pinyin towards the end of the twentieth century. Wade-Giles remained predominant until relatively recently. Unless dealing with a specific dialect, or with a minority language, the majority of modern sources regarding the mainland will refer to Chinese characters by use of the pinyin system. Out of this system we would see the name of the first leader of the PRC as Mao Zedong (rather than the older Wade-Giles Mao Tse-tung). By 1958, it was adopted as the preferred system by the first National People’s Congress. Though many mid-century Western histories or other sources often employed the American system of Yale romanisation, we are increasingly seeing a preference for the pinyin system. The most well-known figure in the development of pinyin is Zhou Youguang (or Chou Yu-kuang in Wade-Giles). The system of pinyin’s development took much influence from the preceding romanisation efforts originating from China: Latinxua Sinwenz and Gwoyeu Romantzyh. The romanisation (pinyin) was one of three targets of the CCP’s language reform, along with simplification of characters and standardisation of vernacular (putonghua). These reforms were achieved and implemented to the extent that the mainland still follows the language practices laid down in the late 1950s. Characters on the mainland are more often than not simplified. The Anglosphere has also increasingly used this form of romanisation, though uptake was not instantaneous. The characters used on the mainland are largely of the ‘simplified’ version. However, simplification does not affect romanisation, as the new character tends to be the same as the traditional, yet with fewer strokes. The romanisations used both in the West and China were accepted as having an ancillary role to the new simplified characters, with calls for full phoneticisation or Latinisation fading into obscurity, especially after the deployment of pinyin romanisation and simplified characters, and their later adoption by Western schools and societies.

For place names, we still somewhat see a simultaneous use of the old postal names and Wade-Giles, though even these long-standing transliterations are beginning to prefer pinyin. In names of outstandingly famous individuals there is still somewhat of a preference for the Wade-Giles system: in the University of Edinburgh library entry for one of Mao’s books the title reads “Selected works of Mao Tse-tung”, with the author listed as Mao Zedong – a perfect example of the mixed employment of systems. Many restaurants will still refer to a certain South-Western province’s food as Szechwan, despite the new pinyin name being written as Sichuan. The reasons for various selections for both names of individuals and regions continue in their use, no doubt as a means for maintaining familiarity.

What one should consider, either in historical studies or more generally, is the context of a transliteration or translation. This article has only covered a short history of romanisation of the Chinese language, and only in the context of the mainland of China – despite this, we can see the sheer variety of interpretation of Chinese characters. Despite the simplification of Chinese characters on the mainland, the romanisation of an entirely different system of writing remains a challenge for linguists and translators. The point to consider is the year of a source, the region, and the origin; all of which will influence the way in which a given source will navigate the challenge of romanisation.