Editing Romanization (section)

{{Short description|Transliteration or transcription to Latin letters}}
{{Redirect|Romanised|the racehorse|Romanised (horse)}}
{{Other uses|Romanisation (disambiguation)|Latinisation (disambiguation)}}
{{Distinguish|Romanianization}}
[[File:Gwoyu.svg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Standard Chinese|Mandarin Chinese]], like many languages, can be romanized in a number of ways; above: [[Traditional Chinese characters|Traditional]] and [[Simplified Chinese characters|Simplified Chinese]] characters meaning Chinese, and romanization systems [[Hanyu pinyin|Hanyu Pinyin]], [[Gwoyeu Romatzyh]], [[Wade-Giles]] and [[Yale romanization of Mandarin|Yale]] for those characters.]]

In [[linguistics]], '''romanization''' is the conversion of text from a different [[writing system]] to the [[Latin script|Roman (Latin) script]], or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include [[transliteration]], for representing written text, and [[transcription (linguistics)|transcription]], for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into ''[[phonemic orthography|phonemic]] transcription'', which records the [[phoneme]]s or units of [[semantic]] meaning in speech, and more strict ''[[phonetic transcription]]'', which records speech sounds with precision.