6 March, 2014
Dear Chris, Rudi and All,
I am looking forward to our call this evening, and wanted to send in some information and examples from Taiwan. In Taiwan, we have some guidance in terms of an "official" translation of standardized Geographic Names. I attach for your reference an English translation of the Regulations of Translating the Standardized Geographic Names.
There is also guidance on the transliteration of names, i.e. that Hanyu Pinyin system should be used unless otherwise provided. I attach these regs (in Chinese) also for reference. In Taiwan, though, different romanization systems have been used at different times in the past. Many of the city and county names continue to use transliterations that were based on romanization systems that were used previously (for example 台北 continues to be transliterated as "Taipei" rather than "Taibei"). There is not an "official" list of these exceptions, but the state-run postal service does provide its list of how the major city and county names should appear in their romanized forms. I attach that excel file as well for reference.
Cheers,
Peter \[Dernbach\]
