Beijing will standardize bilingual signposts in the city, according to a new regulation starting from March 22, Beijing Morning Post reported.

The regulation will standardize all road names into pinyin. Long-established translations of famous locations will be unaltered. For example, "Tsinghua University" will be unchanged, but road signs will read "QINGHUA South Rd."

All flyovers are now called "Bridges" and the regulation specifically limits the use of "Avenue." Currently, the only ones are CHANG'AN Ave., PING'AN Ave., and LIANGGUANG Ave. All other public ways or large roads are named "Streets".

Certain naming conventions that are characteristic of Beijing's culture, such as hutong (bystreet), li (lane), qu (district) and yuan (garden), are retained into the actual pinyin name.

Orientations in road names should be in English, such as "MAIJIAPU East Rd." This is unless it is part of the actual name, like "BEIWEI Rd." However, road names starting with orientations should have them in initials only, for example, "E. CHANG'AN Ave." 

This regulation is the first part of a campaign to standardize English translations on public signs in Beijing. The campaign will extend to all tourist spots, commercial and cultural facilities, museums, subways, sports centers and hospitals in the city, the report said.

(Shanghai Daily March 24, 2006)