The former State Administration of Surveying and Mapping,[1] Geographical Names Committee[2] and former Script Reform Committee[3] of the People's Republic of China have adopted several romanizations for Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur, officially known as pinyin, Regulation of Phonetic Transcription in Hanyu Pinyin Letters of Place Names in Minority Nationality Languages and Orthography of Chinese Personal Name in Hanyu Pinyin Letters. These systems may be referred to as SASM/GNC/SRC transcriptions or SASM/GNC romanizations.
These romanization systems have been used for foreign translations of Chinese personal names and toponyms since 1978.[4]
All schemes except pinyin have a strict form and a broad form, where the broad form is used in general. In the case of pinyin, tone marks are omitted in practice.