cs.CLMay 14, 2026

Cross-Linguistic Transcription and Phonological Representation in the Huìtóngguǎnxì Huáyíyìyǔ

Authors: Ji-eun Kim

Organizations: Department of Korean language and literature, Duksung Women’s University, Seoul, South Korea.

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigates the transcription principles underlying Huìtóngguǎnxì Huáyíyìyǔ (HHY), a series of multilingual glossaries compiled by the Ming government between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for interpreter training. The study treats HHY not as a collection of isolated language materials, but as a coherent multilingual transcription system representing spoken forms of non-Chinese languages through Chinese characters. Methods: A substantial portion of HHY was digitized and aligned with Chinese phonological categories. Previous reconstructions of individual language sections were critically reviewed and integrated into a unified comparative database. The analysis focuses on cross-linguistic regularities in Main Transcription (MT) and Supplementary Transcription (ST) across eight language sections. Results: MT generally represents sounds compatible with the Chinese syllable structure of the period, whereas ST mainly encodes phonetic features less compatible with Chinese phonology. The analysis further shows that Chinese phonological categories were used more flexibly in foreign-language transcription than previously assumed. HHY therefore functioned as a relatively systematic method of phonetic approximation rather than a direct projection of Chinese phonology onto non-Chinese languages. Conclusion: HHY can be analyzed as an internally structured transcription system rather than merely as a collection of glossaries. More broadly, the study demonstrates that historical transcription systems can provide valuable evidence for historical phonology, particularly for under-documented Asian languages with limited historical records.

Explore similar work

CardsList
Sep 17, 2026cs.CL

A Phonemically Comprehensive, ASCII-Only Romanization Scheme for Thai and Lao: Systematic Cross-Lingual Correspondence and Chinese-User-Friendly Design

This paper proposes a phonemically comprehensive, ASCII-only romanization scheme for Thai and Lao, treating the two closely related languages as a unified cross-lingual design problem. The scheme represents segmental contrasts, vowel length, and lexical tone while maintaining one-symbol-one-phoneme transparency and systematic correspondence between Thai and Lao. The scheme prioritizes synchronic phonetic correspondence, including correspondence with Pinyin and Jyutping where applicable, while preserving historical-phonological correspondence where it does not conflict with phonetic transparency. Tone uses a compact single-digit default notation, supplemented by optional tone-value and historical tone-category representations. The resulting scheme provides a readable, keyboard-friendly, and machine-processable phonemic representation for language learning and cross-lingual speech processing.
Zijie Zhang, Tan Lee
Cross-Lingual ConsistencyMultilingual Automatic Speech Recognition
AskPDF
Date pendingcs.CL

Toward a Cross-Lingual Romanization Ecosystem for Sinitic Languages: A Paired Mandarin-Cantonese Case Study

This paper proposes the Sinitic Romanization Ecosystem, a cross-lingual Sinitic romanization design framework with supporting digital infrastructure and a community-driven open-source workflow. The design framework addresses the lack of systematic cross-lingual romanization alignment among Sinitic languages through four design principles: phonetic correspondence for representing similar sounds with similar romanized symbols, historical-phonological correspondence for aligning cognate romanization strings, one-phoneme-one-symbol, and basic Latin-letter use, with a balancing consideration recognizing trade-offs among these principles. For the main paired case study, we develop CantRomZJ1 and MandRomZJ1, Cantonese and Mandarin romanization schemes following the design framework, respectively. We also develop schemes for several other Sinitic languages, including Meixian Hakka, Shanghai Wu, and Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin, following the same design framework. To bring the romanization schemes into practical use, we develop open-source infrastructure for structured romanization storage, conversion, parsing, dictionary construction, and input-method generation. Finally, we evaluate the design framework through speech-to-romanization experiments based on Meta's Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS) fine-tuning. Compared with the Pinyin+Jyutping baseline, our MandRomZJ1+CantRomZJ1 condition reduces Cantonese WER and CER by 7.80% and 10.61%, respectively. These results suggest that cross-lingual romanization alignment can improve transfer in low-resource Sinitic speech technology.
Zijie Zhang, Tan Lee, Yong Cao +1
Phonological UnderstandingMultilingual Automatic Speech RecognitionLow-Resource Languages
AskPDF
Apr 20, 2026cs.CL

Scripts Through Time: A Survey of the Evolving Role of Transliteration in NLP

Cross-lingual transfer in NLP is often hindered by the ``script barrier'' where differences in writing systems inhibit transfer learning between languages. Transliteration, the process of converting the script, has emerged as a powerful technique to bridge this gap by increasing lexical overlap. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the application of transliteration in cross-lingual NLP. We present a taxonomy of key motivations to utilize transliterations in language models, and provide an overview of different approaches of incorporating transliterations as input. We analyze the evolution and effectiveness of these methods, discussing the critical trade-offs involved, and contextualize their need in modern LLMs. The review explores various settings that show how transliteration is beneficial, including handling code-mixed text, leveraging language family relatedness, and pragmatic gains in inference efficiency. Based on this analysis, we provide concrete recommendations for researchers on selecting and implementing the most appropriate transliteration strategy based on their specific language, task, and resource constraints.
Thanmay Jayakumar, Deepon Halder, Raj Dabre
Cross-Lingual TransferLatinNatural Language ProcessingBarrier Functions
AskPDF