Herbert Giles

Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who helped popularize Chinese studies in English. He developed the Wade–Giles system of romanizing Chinese with Thomas Francis Wade.

Wade–Giles: A system for romanizing Chinese, developed by Thomas Francis Wade and revised by Herbert Giles. Giles’s best-known scholarly contribution was revising and promoting this romanization system.
A Chinese-English Dictionary: Herbert Giles’s Chinese-English dictionary, first published in 1892 and later substantially revised. This lexicographic work became a major reference for English-speaking students of Chinese.
British consular service in China: The British government’s network of consular offices and officials in China. Giles served as a British consular official in China before becoming a university scholar.
Pinyin: The standard system for writing Mandarin Chinese pronunciation in the Latin alphabet, developed in the People’s Republic of China. Pinyin largely replaced Wade–Giles in contemporary English-language writing about China.
Thomas Francis Wade: A British diplomat and sinologist who devised the first version of the Wade–Giles system. Wade created the system Giles later revised, making their names inseparable in its history.
Chinese Biographical Dictionary: Herbert Giles’s 1898 reference work containing biographies of people from Chinese history. Giles extended his reference writing beyond vocabulary to Chinese historical figures.
Cambridge University: A university in Cambridge, England, founded in the thirteenth century. Giles held the professorship of Chinese at Cambridge from 1897 to 1932.
Yale romanization of Mandarin: A Mandarin romanization system developed at Yale University for teaching and representing pronunciation. Yale romanization offered language learners an alternative to Wade–Giles.
Chinese romanization: The representation of Chinese speech using the letters of the Latin alphabet. Wade–Giles belongs to the broader effort to make Chinese pronunciation legible in Latin script.
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio: Herbert Giles’s English translation of selected stories from Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi. The translation introduced English readers to a major collection of Chinese supernatural tales.

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Strange Tales from a Chinese StudioRelated: His 1880 translation introduced many English-language readers to the collection.