Katana VentraIP

Transliteration

Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in predictable ways, such as Greek αa, Cyrillic дd, Greek χ → the digraph ch, Armenian նn or Latin æae.[1]

Not to be confused with Translation, literary translation, or loan translation.

For instance, for the Modern Greek term "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual transliteration to Latin script is ⟨Ellīnikī Dīmokratia⟩, and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated as ⟨Rossiya⟩, but is pronounced exactly the same way as "Россия".


Transliteration is the process of representing or intending to represent a word, phrase, or text in a different script or writing system. Transliterations are designed to convey the pronunciation of the original word in a different script, allowing readers or speakers of that script to approximate the sounds and pronunciation of the original word. Transliterations do not change the pronunciation of the word. Thus, in the Greek above example, ⟨λλ⟩ is transliterated ⟨ll⟩ though it is pronounced exactly the same way as [l], or the Greek letters, ⟨λλ⟩. ⟨Δ⟩ is transliterated ⟨D⟩ though pronounced as [ð], and ⟨η⟩ is transliterated ⟨ī⟩, though it is pronounced [i] (exactly like ⟨ι⟩) and is not long.


Transcription, conversely, seeks to capture sound, but phonetically approximate it into the new script; "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" corresponds to [elinicí ðimokratía][2] in the International Phonetic Alphabet. While differentiation is lost in the case of [i], note how the letter shape ⟨κ⟩ becomes either [c] or [k] depending on the vowel that follows it. [Elinicí ðimokratía] is also pronounced slightly differently than the original Greek pronunciation, as it is a phonetic approximation: a transcription, rather than a transliteration.


Angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ may be used to set off transliteration, as opposed to slashes / / for phonemic transcription and square brackets for phonetic transcription. Angle brackets may also be used to set off characters in the original script. Conventions and author preferences vary.

Definitions[edit]

Systematic transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another, typically grapheme to grapheme. Most transliteration systems are one-to-one, so a reader who knows the system can reconstruct the original spelling.


Transliteration is opposed to transcription, which maps the sounds of one language into a writing system. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the target script, for some specific pair of source and target language. Transliteration may be very close to transcription if the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages. In practice, there are some mixed transliteration/transcription systems that transliterate a part of the original script and transcribe the rest.


For many script pairs, there are one or more standard transliteration systems. However, unsystematic transliteration is common.

ICU User Guide: Transforms

International Components for Unicode transliteration services

Archived 2007-12-13 at the Wayback Machine – history of the transliteration of Slavic languages into Latin alphabets.

Transliteration history

– Collection of transliteration tables for many non-Latin scripts maintained by Thomas T. Pedersen.

Transliteration of Non-Latin scripts

Unicode Transliteration Guidelines

working group on Romanization Systems.

United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)

Library of Congress: Romanization Tables

implements google transliteration library and also allows to create To-Do Lists in English and Transliterated Languages.

Localtyping.com

Transliterationenglish.

24x7offshoring.com

– condensed description of the definition of transliteration and its usage.

Usage of Transliterations

G. Gerych. Ottawa University, April 1965. 126 pp. – historical overview of the concept of transliteration and its evolution and application

Transliteration of Cyrillic Alphabets.