Chinese Romanisation Style

Overview

This public guide explains how Mandarin Chinese titles are romanised and styled for display on MangaBaka. The goal is readable, frontend-friendly Pinyin with clear editorial rules that keep titles consistent across the site.

Canonical system: Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks for display, with editorial fallbacks for clarity.

Title field priorities

• Native Title: the original Chinese characters as shown on the cover or source (Simplified or Traditional).
• Romanized Title: the Pinyin shown to users (with tone marks where applicable).

Pinyin display rules

• Use diacritics (tone marks) for display: e.g., 鹤报刀法，我一刀一个 → Hébào Dāofǎ, Wǒ Yì Dāo Yí Gè.
• Use ü for the vowel ü in display (e.g., nǚ).
• Use an apostrophe to disambiguate syllable boundaries when necessary (Xi'an).
• Capitalize content words in title-style capitalization; keep grammatical particles (de, di, le, zhe, ba, ne, ma, ye) lowercased when they are functional.

之 as subtitle divider

When 之 is used as a subtitle divider, it is romanised as a colon (':'), but when it is used as a possessive, it has to be romanised as zhī.

Loanword Rule

• When a Chinese title clearly uses a loanword and there is a common real-world/English term, prefer the real-world term in the romanisation or as the visible English phrase.

Example: if the title references a specific English concept such as "Rhythm Game," present that term visibly while also keeping pinyin for the native characters.

• Maintain the original Chinese title in the native field.

Names & capitalization

• Follow Chinese name order (surname first) for metadata unless an established English name exists. In that case, include the common English form as an alternative display title.
• Capitalize main content words in display pinyin; keep small grammatical particles lowercased.

Numbers, dates, counters

• Use Arabic numerals for clarity and sorting: 第四部 → Di 4-bù (display may include tone marks where useful).
• Hyphens for counters are acceptable to align with cross-language conventions: Di 3-bù: ....

Quotation & punctuation

• Decorative Chinese quotation marks in the native title are retained in the native field. For pinyin display, use standard ASCII quotes.
• Use apostrophes in pinyin display where they clarify syllable boundaries (e.g., Xī'ān).

Examples

• Native: 鹤报刀法，我一刀一个

Romanization: Hébào Dāofǎ, Wǒ Yì Dāo Yí Gè

• Native: 西安事变

Romanization: Xī'ān Shìbiàn

• Native: 女

Romanization: nǚ

Notes for editors

• Do not adopt publisher romanisation as the default; publishers often use inconsistent romanisations.