Working Group on Romanization Systems
Report on the Meeting of the Working Group in London, 16–17 May 2001.
- Following an invitation by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for
British Official Use (PCGN), the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
held its meeting in London, at the offices of the PCGN on May 16–17, 2001. Participants
in the meeting included Mr. Brahim Atoui (Algeria), Mrs. Caroline Burgess (United
Kingdom), Mr. Charles M. Heyda (United States), Mr. Naftali Kadmon (Israel), Mrs.
Sylvie Lejeune (France), Mr. David Munro (United Kingdom), Mr. Peeter Päll (Estonia),
Mr. Gerd Quinting (United States), Mr. Peter E. Raper (South Africa), Mr. Alessandro
Toniolo (Italy), Mr. Paul J. Woodman (United Kingdom).
- The agenda of the meeting included recent developments of various romanization
systems; romanization systems in the context of the United Nations; preparations for the
Eighth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (Berlin,
2002); other activities of the Working Group.
- While discussing the status of various romanization systems already approved by
the United Nations, experts noted that the systems for Chinese, Greek, Hebrew,
Macedonian Cyrillic, Mongolian (in China), Persian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic,
Tibetan and Uighur were stable and being used by the appropriate national authorities
though the degree of implementation in different countries varied greatly and some aspects
(e.g. the use of diacritical marks or apostrophes) deserved further attention. Alternative
national systems were adopted and occasionally used for Bulgarian and Khmer. It was
hoped that the proposed modification of the romanization system for Thai would be put
forward at the next UN Conference in 2002, after clarifying some differences in the use
of certain character complexes. Working Group members took note of the developments
regarding the romanization system for Arabic, notably the planned conference on
romanization issues in Algeria in 2002 and the meeting of experts of the Arabic Division
planned to take place in the United Arab Emirates in autumn 2001, in accordance with
resolution 4 of the Seventh United Nations Conference on the Standardization of
Geographical Names (New York, 1998). More information was needed on the
implementation of the romanization system for Amharic in Ethiopia. As regards the
romanization systems for the languages of the Indian group (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,
Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu), it
was stated that, as these systems had not been implemented, it was necessary to contact the
national names authorities of the countries of that division in order to obtain their views
on the necessity of revising previous United Nations resolutions concerning the adoption
of the aforementioned systems.
- Turning to the languages and scripts that are not yet covered by romanization
systems recommended by the United Nations, members of the Working Group noted that
while there existed national romanization systems for Byelorussian, Dzongkha, Laotian,
and Maldivian, none of the systems had been presented to the Working Group and
subsequently to UNGEGN sessions or United Nations conferences on the standardization
of geographical names. National authorities of these countries needed to be contacted in
order to encourage them to put forward their national systems for consideration by experts
on geographical names. Experts noted that although the romanization system for Ukrainian
had been discussed at previous UNGEGN sessions, there was no new information available
since 1997 and the Roman-letter equivalents of certain Ukrainian characters still needed
clarification. Working Group members took note of the new official system of
romanization for Korean promulgated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Republic
of Korea, in July 2000. The Working Group was mindful of the efforts by experts from
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea started in 1989
seeking to agree on a single international system for the romanization of Korean
geographical names. Information to clarify the actually utilized script and/or possible
romanization systems for Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh and Tigrinya was obtained. No
new information was received on the status of the romanization systems for Burmese,
Japanese, Kirghiz, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Pashto, Sinhalese and Tajik.
- Working Group members noted that there was evidence of the actual and quite
stable use of new official Roman alphabets for Turkmen and Uzbek. Thus, these languages
now fall outside the scope of consideration of the Working Group. In order to facilitate the
use of earlier name sources, however, it was agreed to include the tables of
correspondences between Cyrillic and Roman characters for Azerbaijani, Turkmen and
Uzbek in the report of the Working Group to the Eighth United Nations Conference on the
Standardization of Geographical Names.
- Discussing the difficulties faced by the United Nations departments and services
in using geographical names, especially diacritical marks accompanying the letters and
characters in some names, it was noted that there already existed technical solutions to
solve the problems with diacritical marks. The UNGEGN Working Group on
Toponymic Data Files and Gazetteers does address these issues. The resolutions of the
United Nations conferences on the standardization of geographical names supported the
use of diacritics in names since they are integral parts of the spellings of names.
- Working Group members also discussed preparations for the Eighth United Nations
Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. This involved the contents and
format of the report on the current status of United Nations romanization systems for
geographical names and conceptions for the romanization sub-topic at the planned
Technical Exhibition. Development of the Working Group website was also briefly
discussed.
- During the two-day meeting the Working Group was able to discuss a wide range
of topics, accomplishing a great deal of work thanks to the dedicated efforts of each
participant of the meeting and to the excellent organizational support by the PCGN, the
host of the meeting. Altogether, these meetings are most beneficial and will continue to be
in the future.
Peeter Päll,
Convenor, Working Group on Romanization Systems