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2013年的ISO-TC46柏林会议上，IAO国际标准化组织任命我担任ISO7098“Documentation and Information: Romanization of Chinese”的工作组组长，由我带领美国、俄罗斯、加拿大和德国委派的4名专家研制这个国际标准。目前，这个国际标准已经进入CD(Committee Draft)阶段，得到了国际上大多数国家的支持。
由于中文不是拼音文字，因此，中文转换（conversion）为拉丁字母情况与拼音文字之间的转写（transliteration）很不同，为此，在这个国际标准中，我们把转换（conversion）进一步区分转写（transliteration）和译音（transcription）这两个不同的概念。
这里，我把ISO-7098的CD中有关这两个概念的英文叙述抄录如下，供大家参考和讨论。

1 General principles of conversion of writing systems

1.1 The words in a language, which are written according to a given script (the converted system), sometimes have to be rendered according to a different system (the conversion system), normally used for a different language. This operation is often followed for historical or geographical texts, cartographical documents and in particular for bibliographical work in every case where it is necessary to write words supplied in various alphabets in a manner that allows intercalation with other words in a single alphabet so as to enable a uniform alphabetization to be made in bibliographies, catalogues, indices, toponymic lists, etc. It is indispensable in that it permits the univocal transmission of a written message between two countries using different writing systems or exchanging a message, the writing of which is different from their own. It thereby permits transmission by manual as well as mechanical or electronic means.
The two basic methods of conversion of a system of writing are transliteration and transcription.
1.2 Transliteration is the operation which consists of representing the characters of an entirely alphabetical character or alphanumeric character system of writing by the characters of the conversion alphabet. In principle, this conversion should be made character by character: each character of the converted alphabet is rendered by one character, and one only of the conversion alphabet, to ensure the complete and unambiguous reversibility of the conversion alphabet into the converted alphabet.
When the number of characters used in the conversion system is smaller than the number of characters of the converted system, it is necessary to use digraph or diacritical marks. In this case one must avoid as far as possible arbitrary choice and the use of purely conventional marks and try to maintain a certain phonetic logic in order to give the system a wide acceptance.
However, it must be accepted that the graphism obtained may not always be correctly pronounced according to the phonetic habits of the language (or of all the languages) which usually use(s) the conversion alphabet. On the other hand, this graphism must be such that the reader who knows the converted language may mentally restore unequivocally the original graphism and thus pronounce it correctly.
1.3 Retransliteration is the operation which consists of converting the characters of a conversion alphabet to those of the converted alphabet. This operation is the exact opposite of transliteration; it is carried out by applying the rules of a system of transliteration in reverse order so as to reconstitute the transliterated word to its original form.
1.4 Transcription is the operation which consists of representing the characters of a language, whatever the original system of writing, by the phonetic system of letters or signs of the conversion language.
A transcription system is of necessity based on the orthographical conventions of a conversion language and its alphabet. The users of a transcription system must therefore have a knowledge of the conversion language to be able to pronounce the characters correctly. Transcription is not strictly reversible.
Transcription may be used for the conversion of all writing systems. It is the only method that can be used for systems that are not entirely alphabetical and for all ideophonographic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, etc.).
1.5 Romanization is the conversion of non-Latin writing systems to the Latin alphabet by means of transliteration or transcription. To carry out Romanization it is possible to use either transliteration or transcription or a combination of these two methods, according to the nature of the converted system.
1.6 A conversion system proposed for international use may call for compromise and the sacrifice of certain national customs. It is therefore necessary for each national community of users to accept concessions, fully abstaining in every case from imposing as a matter of course solutions that are actually justified only by national practice (for example, regards pronunciation, orthography, etc.). However, these concessions would obviously not relate to the use that a country makes of its national writing system: when this national system is not converted, the characters constituting it must be accepted in the form in which they are written in the national language.
When a country uses two systems univocally,convertible one into the other to write its own language, the system of transliteration thus implemented must be taken a priori as a basis for the international standardized system, as far as it is compatible with the other principles mentioned hereafter.
1.7 Where necessary, the conversion systems should specify an equivalent for each character, not only the letters but also the punctuation marks, numbers, etc. They should similarly take into account the arrangement of the sequence of characters that make up the text, for example the direction of the script, and specify the way of distinguishing words and of using separation signs and capital letters, following as closely as possible the customs of the language(s) which use the converted writing system.

2 Principles for converting ideophonographic scripts

2.1 The structure of ideophonographic characters, where conveyance of meaning is of greater importance than that of pronunciation, entails the existence of a large number of characters (more than 60 000 in the case of Chinese), thus making sign by sign transliteration impossible and resulting in the need to devise a system of transcription. Each character must therefore be transcribed by one or more Latin letters standing for the pronunciation or pronunciations of the character in question. This means that the transcriber must be familiar with the reading or readings of the text to be transcribed.
2.2 In as much as the transcription of ideophonographic characters is merely a matter of phonetic notation of characters in Latin letters of the languages which use them, the identical characters will require different transcriptions depending on whether they are found in Chinese, Japanese or Korean texts.
2.3 On the other hand, the same character within the same language must always be transcribed in the same way regardless of the type of graphic representation utilized (traditional form or simplified form of a Chinese character) except where a single character has more than one pronunciation.
2.4 Reversibility of Romanization systems of ideophonographic characters is impossible due to the following factors:
¾ the disparity in pronunciation of a given character in two different languages or within a single language;
¾ the high frequency of homophones within the same language;
¾ the possible coexistence of several writing systems within a given text.
2.5 In the case of those languages which use, even within the same text, more than one kind of script (for example Kana and Chinese characters in Japanese, Hangul and Chinese characters in Korean) both the transcription of the ideophonographic characters and the conversion of the other types of characters (for example Kana/Hangul should yield a consistent and homogeneous system of Romanization).
2.6 Although, as a rule, spacing between characters is regular, it is usual to transcribe the characters forming a single word by linking them together. Principles and rules for formation of words shall be standardized in other texts related to every language concerned.
2.7 Although there are no capital letters in ideophonographic characters, it is usual when romanizing to capitalize some words, following the national uses.
今年5月5日-9日将在华盛顿召开ISO-TC46会议，如果顺利，ISO-7098的研制有可能进入DIS(Draft of International Standard)阶段的投票。我将在这次会议上用英文做一个专题发言，向各国代表介绍我们的研制工作。

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