Romanization of Chinese in The Republic of China - Place Names

Place Names

The national government officially adopted Tongyong Pinyin in 2002 but allowed local governments to make their own choices. Consequently, Taipei, adopted Hanyu Pinyin. Taipei replaced its earlier signage, most of which had used a modified version of Wade-Giles influenced by the Postal department. Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second city, adopted Tongyong. Elsewhere in Taiwan, signs tend to be in a mixture of systems, with Tongyong Pinyin being increasingly common, but still having many signs left over from the MPS II (or even the GR) era. In September 2008, the Ministry of Education announced it was switching from Tongyong Pinyin to Hanyu Pinyin as of January 1, 2009, which is the current legal standard.

Romanisation errors are common throughout Taiwan, because of the shortage of a workforce trained in romanisation and the lack of political will for correct implementation. Many common errors are derived from the accent of Taiwanese Mandarin, such as interchanging the -ng and -n sounds. For example, guan and guang are often confused with one another on signs and plaques. Simple typos (such as replacing e with t) are also ubiquitous. The area with the fewest errors on official signage is Taipei. In Kaohsiung, because of the World Games 2009, the city sponsored a "Say It Right" effort, which fixed most of the romanization mistakes in the city. Since romanised signage is not a priority in areas with few foreign tourists, most errors occur in remote areas with limited resources (if there were any romanised signs to begin with).

Official websites of local governments also employ romanisation inconsistently. For instance, as of 2007, the Zhongli City Hall website's title and URL are still in MPS II (Jung-li). On the other hand, the Zhongli Land Office has updated its title to Tongyong (Jhongli), but URL remains in MPS II. Also, the Zhongli Household Registration Office have a Wade-Giles URL (Chungli) but refers to itself in Tongyong.