The Chinese transcription of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) was the most used phonetic transcription of Chinese in the French speaking world until the middle of the 20th century. It was created by Séraphin Couvreur of the aforesaid institute in 1902. It was superseded by Hanyu Pinyin.
The transcription of the EFEO did not borrow its phonetics from the national official Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 普通话; traditional Chinese: 普通話; pinyin: pǔtōnghuà). Rather, it was synthesized independently to be a mean of Chinese dialects, and shows a state of sounds a little older in form (as in Latinxua Sinwenz and the older version of Wade-Giles). Hence, certain words which phoneme is [tɕ] (Pinyin: /j/), have been transcribed as either /ts/ or /k/.
| IPA | EFEO | WG | Pinyin |
| p | p | p | b |
| pʰ | p' | p' | p |
| t | t | t | d |
| tʰ | t' | t' | t |
| k | k | k | g |
| kʰ | k' | k' | k |
| ts | ts | ts | z |
| tsʰ | ts' | ts' | c |
| tʂ | tch | ch | zh |
| tʂʰ | tch' | ch' | ch |
| ʂ | ch | sh | sh |
| ʐ | j | j | r |
| tɕ | k/ts | ch | j |
| tɕʰ | k'/ts' | ch' | q |
| ɕ | s/h | hs | x |
| w | ou/w | w | w |
| j | i/y | y | y |
| ɤ | ö/é | o/ê | e |
| ɚ | eul | êrh | er |
| z̩ | eu | û | i |
| ʐ | e | ih | i |
| y | u | ü | ü/u |
| u | ou | u | u |
| ən | en | ên | en |
| ɤŋ | eng | êng | eng |
| jɛ | ie | ieh | ie |
| jɤʊ | ieou/iou | iu | iu |
| jɛn | ien | ien | ian |
| wo | ouo | o/uo | o/uo |
| waɪ | ouai | uai | uai |
| weɪ | ouei | ui | ui |
| wan | ouan | uan | uan |
| wən | ouen | un | un |
| ɥœ | iue | üeh | üe/ue |
| ɥɛn | iuen | üan | üan/uan |
| yn | iun | ün | ün/un |
| jʊŋ | ioung | iung | iong |