Romanizing Chinese Bibliographic Records

If your library has acquired the ability to index diacritics and non-Roman characters, you can transliterate Chinese characters to Roman alphabet characters in a bibliographic record by using the options in the Edit | Romanize menu. To Romanize a record, the system uses a table that maps each Chinese character to its Romanized equivalent in either the Wade-Giles or Pin Yin schemes.

When editing a record with a value of "chi" in the fixed-length LANGUAGE field, you can Romanize the record. The menu options available under Edit | Romanize depend on the type of MARC format the bibliographic record uses. The table below identifies the different MARC formats and describes how the system handles each one.

MARC Format Romanize Menu Options System Behavior
MARC 21 Create 880s
Delete 880s
Flip
Paired Display 		The Romanized data are kept in the base fields of the record, and the Chinese or other non-Roman characters appear in MARC 880 fields.
CNMARC Create A-Z
Delete A-Z
Flip 		The Romanized data are entered into additional subfields within the fields that contain Chinese characters. The subfield codes for the new subfields are the uppercase equivalents of those subfields that contain Chinese. For example:

110 |a<Chinese>|b<Chinese>|c<Chinese>|A<Romanized version of subfield 'a' data>|B<Romanized version of subfield 'b' data>|C<Romanized version of subfield 'c' data>

Choose a menu option above to see how to perform that action.

Creating 880s/A-Z

You can Romanize a record if the LANGUAGE fixed-length field contains the value "chi" and if the record has not yet been Romanized. If you want to re-Romanize a record that already has been Romanized, select Delete 880s/A-Z to remove the romanization and then Romanize the record again.

  1. Retrieve a bibliographic record.
  2. Choose the Edit button above the brief bibliographic record display to open the record in the editor.
  3. Choose Edit | Romanize.
  4. Choose Create 880s/A-Z. (Depending on the MARC format your library uses, the menu displays either Create 880s or Create A-Z.)

If your library uses MARC21, the Romanized characters appear in the 880 fields on the record. If your library uses CNMARC, the Romanized characters appear next to the Chinese characters in the same MARC tag fields. See the example above.

Deleting 880s/A-Z

If a record has been Romanized, you can remove the Roman characters from the record:

  1. Retrieve a bibliographic record.
  2. Choose the Edit button above the brief bibliographic record display to open the record in the editor.
  3. Choose Edit | Romanize.
  4. Choose Delete 880s/A-Z. (Depending on the MARC format your library uses, the menu displays either Delete 880s or Delete A-Z.)

This action removes the values in the 880 fields/A-Z subfields. Note that if you have flipped the Romanized and Chinese characters, the Chinese characters are removed.

Flipping Romanized and Chinese Characters

Flipping allows you to view the Romanized information in the base fields or subfields and the Chinese characters in the 880 fields/A-Z subfields. To flip the Romanized and Chinese characters:

  1. Retrieve a bibliographic record.
  2. Choose the Edit button above the brief bibliographic record display to open the record in the editor.
  3. Choose Edit | Romanize.
  4. Choose Flip.
  5. To flip the Chinese back to the base fields/subfields and the Roman characters to the 880 fields/A-Z subfields, select Flip again.

Displaying Romanized and Chinese Characters as Pairs

CNMARC records automatically present Chinese characters and their Romanized counterparts as a pair, shown above. You also can view MARC21 records in this format:

  1. Retrieve a bibliographic record.
  2. Choose the Edit button above the brief bibliographic record display to open the record in the editor.
  3. Choose Edit | Romanize.
  4. Choose Paired Display.
  5. To return to the unpaired display, choose View | Refresh.