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The Library of Congress > Cataloging, Acquisitions > Tools, Documentation > ALA-LC Romanization Tables

ALA-LC Romanization Tables

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The links below are to the scanned text of the 1997 edition of the ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts, approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, with the following exceptions:

  • The table for Chinese is a revised table reflecting the Library's conversion to Pinyin romanization in 2000.
  • The table for Kurdish is a revised table that replaces both the Kurdish (in Perso-Arabic Script) table (p. 114-155) and the Kurdish (1946) section of the Non-Slavic Languages (in Cyrillic Script) table (p. 148)
  • The table for Ladino is a revised table that was approved in 2005.
  • The table for Inuktitut is a new table that was approved in 2007.

The 1997 edition of the tables is also available for purchase in book form from the Cataloging Distribution Service.

  • Introduction
  • Character Sets Used in Romanization
  • Index to Languages

Romanization Tables

Amharic Arabic Armenian
Assamese Azerbaijani Balinese
Belorussian Bengali Bulgarian
Burmese Chinese Church Slavic
Divehi Georgian Greek
Gujarati Hebrew and Yiddish Hindi
Inuktitut Japanese Javanese, Sundanese,
and Madurese
Kannada Kashmiri Khmer
Korean Kurdish Ladino
Lao Lepcha Limbu
Malay Malayalam Marathi
Mongolian Moplah Non-Slavic Languages
(in Cyrillic Script)
Oriya Ottoman Turkish Pali
Panjabi Persian Pushto
Russian Sanskrit and Prakrit Santali
Serbian and Macedonian Sindhi Sinhalese
Tamil Telugu Thai
Tibetan Tigrinya Uighur
Ukrainian Urdu