Ro·man·ize
In linguistics, romanization or Latinization (also spelled as romanisation or Latinisation ) is the representation of a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system. Methods of romanization include transliteration, representing written text, and transcription, representing the spoken word. The latter can be subdivided into phonological transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision. Each romanization has its own set of rules for pronunciation of the romanized words.
To romanize is to transliterate or transcribe a language into the Roman alphabet. This process is most commonly associated with the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages (CJK). Cyrillization is the similar process of representing a language using the Cyrillic alphabet.
