EdCitation publishes this guide to transliteration and romanisation in references; its tools take every reference from the publisher's record rather than composing it. Transliteration writes Cyrillic, Arabic or Greek letter by letter in the Latin alphabet; romanisation is the wider term, covering Hanyu Pinyin for Chinese characters, Hepburn for Japanese and Revised Romanization for Korean. None of the six styles we build names a system, so the rule that matters most is to use one system for the whole list.
We read each system at its source on 26 September 2026. The Library of Congress answered with a bot check, so its tables were read in archived copies from February to August 2026; ISO 9 and ISO 7098 are sold, so we read their catalogue pages. EdCitation's Cite a source gives a record's own title and names, in whatever script the record holds, and Verify references checks the finished list. Neither transliterates for you; we ran both on real articles in Cyrillic, Chinese characters, Arabic and Japanese.
When should you transliterate a title or name in a reference?
In APA, MLA, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, almost always; in Chicago, when your readers need it.
| Style | A title in a non-Latin script | Names | System named |
|---|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Transliterate, then [English translation]; the script may stay where transliterating is not practical | Romanised in its examples | None; its examples use Pinyin with tone marks and Revised Romanization |
| MLA 9 | Script, then transliteration, then translation | Transliteration after the script | None; its Russian examples carry the ALA-LC breve and tie |
| Chicago 18 author-date | A matter of judgement | Not in the pages we could read | Chapter 11, behind a subscription |
| Harvard (Cite Them Right) | Script or transliteration, with a translation | Always transliterated | None |
| IEEE | The English title, then "(in Japanese)" | Romanised; its Japanese example has no macron | None |
| Vancouver | [English translation], the original optional | Romanised, as in Nyporko AIu | Box 6 of Citing Medicine could not be read |
What each style's own pages say
APA's Publication Manual, section 9.38, transliterates the title so the list can be alphabetised (Adams, 2021). Its news example keeps Pinyin tone marks, Gāoxióng shuǐguǒ, and its song example is Revised Romanization, Jeonhaji motan jinsim. MLA prefers the original characters and a translation, with a transliteration for readers who need one, in a post written for the eighth edition (Modern Language Association, 2017); its Tolstoy entries spell Kreĭt͡serova sonata, with the breve and tie of the Library of Congress table.
Chicago calls transliterating a Russian journal title "a matter of editorial judgment" (University of Chicago Press, n.d.); its chapter 11 sections on romanisation are behind a subscription. We could not read Cite Them Right; the University of Westminster (2026) lets a title stay in its script but always transliterates the author, and Leeds Harvard transliterates everything, adding the characters for Mandarin, Japanese, Korean and Thai sources (University of Leeds, n.d.). IEEE's examples give M. Gorkii and a publisher, Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha, with no macron (IEEE, 2018). NLM's Vancouver examples give Nyporko AIu and Blium IaB (Patrias, 2007). EdCitation builds Chicago's author-date system only. Our guide to citing a non-English source covers translations and capitals.
Which romanisation system should you use?
The one your department or journal names; if none, the one your field reads.
ALA-LC Romanization Tables
The ALA-LC tables, approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, cover more than seventy languages and scripts (Library of Congress, n.d.). A title romanised in ALA-LC is the one a North American catalogue search finds. The Russian table uses diacritics: й is ĭ, and я is i͡a, with a tie (Library of Congress, 2012c). The Chinese table follows Pinyin but drops tone marks and spaces every syllable, as in Ming Qing xiao shuo bi jiao yan jiu (Library of Congress, 2012b). Korean is the exception: the Library follows McCune-Reischauer, so 서울대 is Sŏuldae (Library of Congress, 2009).
ISO 9 and GOST 7.79 for Cyrillic
ISO 9:1995 maps 118 Cyrillic characters of Slavic and non-Slavic alphabets one to one; ISO lists it as current, confirmed in 2022, amended in 2024 and due to be replaced (International Organization for Standardization, 1995). Russia's GOST 7.79-2000 calls itself the authentic text of ISO 9-95, and its System A is the strict, reversible form: щ becomes ŝ, ю becomes û, я becomes â (Interstate Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification, 2000). It also asks for one system within a document. Our Russian GOST guide covers System B.
BGN/PCGN
The BGN/PCGN systems were agreed by the US Board on Geographic Names and the UK's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for place names (Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, 2022). The Russian one, adopted in 1944 and 1947, has no diacritics beyond ë: й is y, ю is yu, я is ya, and е after a vowel is ye.
Hanyu Pinyin
For names, China's national standard GB/T 28039-2011, in force, writes the family name first, then the given name as one word, each with a capital, and allows tone marks to be dropped in some uses (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine & Standardization Administration of China, 2011). ISO 7098:2015 sets the romanisation of Putonghua, Mandarin, for bibliographies and catalogues (International Organization for Standardization, 2015). See also our GB/T 7714 guide.
Hepburn
Japan's Cabinet notice of 22 December 2025 gives one table with shi, chi, tsu and fu, and marks a long vowel with a macron or by doubling the vowel (Cabinet of Japan, 2025). The Council for Cultural Affairs (2025) calls these Hepburn spellings, notes that Hepburn is not one fixed system, and traces the habit of dropping macrons to English. The Library of Congress (2022) allows the macron only: jōhō, "not jouhou". More in our Japanese guide.
Revised Romanization of Korean
South Korea's notice 2014-42 avoids any mark that is not a Roman letter, lets people and organisations keep a spelling already in use, and has a letter-by-letter form for academic work (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 2014). See our Korean guide.
IJMES and ALA-LC for Arabic
IJMES writes names and titles without diacritics but keeps ʿayn and hamza, and renders tāʾ marbūṭa as a (International Journal of Middle East Studies, n.d.). ALA-LC keeps every diacritic and writes tāʾ marbūṭah as h, or t in a construct (Library of Congress, 2012a). The Arabic guide has more on names.
How do the systems compare on real names and titles?
Differently, even on one name. The examples come from the articles we tested, and the Korean one from the Library of Congress.
| Script | System | Example | Where it is used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cyrillic | ALA-LC | Щербакова, С. Ю. → Shcherbakova, S. I͡U.; учителя → uchiteli͡a | North American catalogues |
| Cyrillic | BGN/PCGN 1947 | Shcherbakova, S. Yu.; uchitelya | Place names, UK and US |
| Cyrillic | ISO 9, GOST 7.79 System A | Ŝerbakova, S. Û.; učitelâ | Reversible transliteration |
| Chinese characters | GB/T 28039 Pinyin | 许静 → Xu Jing, or Xǔ Jìng with tones | China's standard for names |
| Chinese characters | ALA-LC | 大学生冒险行为的心理学解读 → Da xue sheng mao xian xing wei de xin li xue jie du | Catalogues; Leeds Harvard's example |
| Japanese | Cabinet notice 2025 (Hepburn) | 授業 → jugyō or jugyou; 学習 → gakushū or gakushuu | Japan's official spelling |
| Japanese | ALA-LC | jugyō, gakushū, never doubled | Catalogues |
| Korean | Revised Romanization | 서울대 → Seouldae | South Korea's official system |
| Korean | McCune-Reischauer (LC) | 서울대 → Sŏuldae | Library of Congress |
| Arabic | IJMES | Mushkilat al-Sihha al-Nafsiyya lada Talabat al-Jamiʿa al-Urduniyya | Middle East studies |
| Arabic | ALA-LC | Mushkilāt al-ṣiḥḥah al-nafsīyah ladá ṭalabat al-Jāmiʻah al-Urdunīyah | Catalogues |
| Any | The record's own script | Given by Cite a source from a DOI | Free, six styles |
Should you keep the diacritics?
Keep them if your system uses them and you can type them; drop them only where it says to. IJMES drops them from names and titles, Revised Romanization avoids them, and ALA-LC, ISO 9 and the Japanese notice use them. Mixing is the mistake: Shcherbakova with ALA-LC's I͡U in one entry and BGN's Yu in the next reads as two people.
What about a name the author romanises their own way?
Use the author's own spelling, even against your system. The Tver article prints its authors in English as T.A. Golubeva and S.Yu. Shcherbakova (Golubeva & Shcherbakova, 2023): BGN's Yu, not ALA-LC's I͡U. The Mandarin article gives Xu Jing and Yang Xiujun, and Dirasat's page names its author Mariam Awwad Al- Ziadat, where IJMES would write Maryam ʿAwwad al-Ziyadat (Al-Ziadat, 2023). Japan's notice and Korea's both defer to the person's own spelling, and IJMES keeps accepted English spellings of well-known names.
Where no romanised form exists, do not guess a reading. The Japanese conference paper we tested names 尾崎仁美, whose given name can be read more than one way, and we could not confirm which. Family-name order, particles and prefixes are the subject of our forthcoming guide, names-in-references-across-cultures.
How do you transliterate a reference, step by step?
- Start from the record: give EdCitation's Cite a source the DOI and pick a style, so the title, names and numbers are the publisher's.
- Open the article and look for the authors' own romanised names and an English title.
- Use the system your department or journal names; if none, pick one and keep it for the whole list.
- Romanise the title where your style asks, then add the English translation in square brackets.
- Keep or drop diacritics as the system says, and the same way in every entry.
- Keep the DOI in every entry; it is what lets a checker find a record held in another script.
- Run the finished list through Verify references and read the reason given for every entry.
What does EdCitation return for a source in another script?
The record's own title and names, as held; romanising them is your job. That makes Cite a source the best free place to start: EdCitation takes each entry from the record instead of inventing one, so the romanised name you add sits on an entry that is otherwise right. It builds all six styles from a DOI, free with no account, and screens for retraction. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper.
The entries Cite a source built
For DOI 10.26456/vtpsyped/2023.4.101, APA gave: "Голубева, Т. А., & Щербакова, С. Ю. (2023). Идеал учителя глазами студентов. Вестник Тверского государственного университета. Серия: Педагогика и психология, (4), 101–111." The record's capitals became sentence case; every style kept the Cyrillic, with no transliteration or translation.
For 10.35534/tppc/0102006, APA gave "许静, & 杨秀君. (2019). 大学生冒险行为的心理学解读. 心理咨询理论与实践, 1(2), 67–73." The names stay whole, with no initials; romanise them as Xu, J., & Yang, X.
For 10.35516/edu.v50i3.2148, APA gave "Al-Ziadat, M. A. (2023). مشكلات الصحة النفسية لدى طلبة الجامعة الأردنية." The journal page's English title is not in the record, so add it in square brackets yourself, and IEEE named the journal "Edu", from the record's short title. For 10.4992/pacjpa.85.0_pp-026, the poster's number came back as its page, "PP-026". For 10.12737/24097, whose record lists one author in both scripts, APA gave "Овсепян, Ж., & Ovsepyan, Z. (2017)": one person counted twice. Delete one.
The answers from Verify references
We pasted eight entries, some in their own script and some romanised. The Cyrillic entry with its DOI was verified ("The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."), and so were the Arabic-script and Japanese entries without DOIs ("Title, year and first author match a published record."). The Mandarin entry in characters only was marked could not check: "This entry is written in characters the search cannot match yet." Romanised, with their DOIs, the Russian, Mandarin and Arabic entries were marked could not check, since each record's title is "in another script or language from your entry, so the titles could not be compared." Without DOIs, the same three were marked could not check too: "This entry gives its title in romanised form or in translation, and the record may hold it only in the original script." Keep the DOI in every romanised entry all the same, and see checking a reference is real. For a whole paper, References from a file (Pro, $8 a month) checks each reference in an uploaded paper and matches every citation to the list.
Quick questions
How do I transliterate a title in APA 7?
Write the title in the Latin alphabet, then add the English translation in square brackets, not italicised. APA names no system; EdCitation's Cite a source gives the record's own title to start from.
Which system should I use for Russian names?
The one your journal or department names: ALA-LC, BGN/PCGN or ISO 9. If an author prints their own Latin spelling, use it.
Should I keep Pinyin tone marks in references?
APA's own example keeps them; the Library of Congress drops them, and China's standard lets them go in some uses. Choose one and keep to it.
Is Hepburn romanization written with macrons?
Japan's 2025 notice uses macrons or doubled vowels, and the Library of Congress uses macrons only. Neither drops the long vowel altogether.
Does EdCitation transliterate for me?
No. EdCitation gives the record's own script and names, and checks the list with Verify references; the romanisation is yours.
References
- Adams, A. (2021, August 23). When and how to transliterate titles in references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/transliterated-titles-references
- Al-Ziadat, M. A. (2023). مشكلات الصحة النفسية لدى طلبة الجامعة الأردنية [Mental health problems among Jordan University students]. Dirasat: Educational Sciences, 50(3), 18–32. https://doi.org/10.35516/edu.v50i3.2148
- Cabinet of Japan. (2025, December 22). ローマ字のつづり方 [Romanisation of Japanese] [PDF]. Agency for Cultural Affairs. https://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/94303201_01.pdf
- Council for Cultural Affairs. (2025, August 20). 改定ローマ字のつづり方（答申） [Revised romanisation of Japanese: Report] [PDF]. Agency for Cultural Affairs. https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkashingikai/sokai/pdf/94261201_01.pdf
- General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine & Standardization Administration of China. (2011). 中国人名汉语拼音字母拼写规则 [The Chinese phonetic alphabet spelling rules for Chinese names] (GB/T 28039-2011). https://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/std/newGbInfo?hcno=22334869F6825C2492FC9BC913430EAD
- Golubeva, T. A., & Shcherbakova, S. Yu. (2023). Идеал учителя глазами студентов [The ideal of a teacher through the eyes of students]. Вестник Тверского государственного университета. Серия: Педагогика и психология, (4), 101–111. https://doi.org/10.26456/vtpsyped/2023.4.101
- IEEE. (2018). IEEE reference guide (V 11.12.2018) [PDF]. IEEE Author Center. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/IEEE-Reference-Guide.pdf
- International Journal of Middle East Studies. (n.d.). IJMES translation and transliteration guide [PDF]. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/630d1d754cf5970011527e65/IJMES-Translation-and-Transliteration-guide.pdf
- International Organization for Standardization. (1995). Information and documentation: Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters: Slavic and non-Slavic languages (ISO 9:1995) [Catalogue entry]. https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html
- International Organization for Standardization. (2015). Information and documentation: Romanization of Chinese (ISO 7098:2015) [Catalogue entry]. https://www.iso.org/standard/61420.html
- Interstate Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification. (2000). Правила транслитерации кирилловского письма латинским алфавитом [Rules for the transliteration of Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet] (GOST 7.79-2000). Rosstandart. https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/b8b907b5-25ea-4fca-8e05-1eb35d0b75ef
- Library of Congress. (n.d.). ALA-LC romanization tables. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html
- Library of Congress. (2009). Korean romanization table (2009 version, updated July 2025) [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf
- Library of Congress. (2012a). Arabic romanization table [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
- Library of Congress. (2012b). Chinese romanization table [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/chinese.pdf
- Library of Congress. (2012c). Russian romanization table [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf
- Library of Congress. (2022). Japanese romanization table [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf
- Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. (2014). 국어의 로마자 표기법 [Romanization of Korean] (Notice No. 2014-42). National Institute of Korean Language. https://www.korean.go.kr/kornorms/regltn/regltnView.do?regltn_code=0004
- Modern Language Association. (2017, February 8). When translating from a language that does not use roman characters, like Chinese, do I include the original characters or a transliteration? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/nonroman-characters/
- Patrias, K. (2007). Citing medicine: The NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (D. L. Wendling, Tech. Ed.; 2nd ed.), chapter 1, Journals. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7282/
- Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. (2022). Romanization of Russian: BGN/PCGN 1947 system [PDF]. GOV.UK. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/636cd2828fa8f5357a0c652c/ROMANIZATION_OF_RUSSIAN_2022_final.pdf
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). Citation, documentation of sources (Q&A No. 169). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0169.html
- University of Leeds. (n.d.). Leeds Harvard: Foreign language material. Leeds University Library. https://library.leeds.ac.uk/referencing-examples/9/leeds-harvard/105/foreign-language-material
- University of Westminster. (2026, September 9). Harvard style. Referencing your sources. https://libguides.westminster.ac.uk/referencing/harvard