I was talking yesterday about a table of Chinese characters used to
transliterate foreign names into Chinese, which I have seen on
[Coulmas 1999].

I think it lays within the limits of fair usage of that book to quote
part of the relevant entry and to upload a low-resolution scan of the
table.

"Chinese transliteration - [...] Since every Chinese syllable can be
represented by a multiplicity of Chinese characters, a selection must
be made for the use of certain characters rather than others for
certain syllables. Transliterating non-Chinese proper names into
Chinese hence involves two steps: (1) choosing a string of Chinese
syllables that approximate the sound of the original name; and (2)
assigning those syllables Chinese characters. Since both steps allow
for many different options, a convention must be established. The
Chinese standard list of transliteration character which is used in
mainland China is given in table 3. No comparable list exists in
Taiwan or Hong Kong, [...]"
(from Florian Coulmas, "The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing
Systems", Blackwell Publishers, 1999, 640 pages, ISBN 063121481X,
entry "Chinese transliteration", page 75)

Here is the scan of Table 3 (pages 76-77) mentioned in the text;
sorry for the poor scan quality:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qalam/files/CnTransl.gif

--
Marco