Transliteration
Encyclopedia
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation
, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another
. For instance, the Greek expression "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" (meaning "Hellenic Republic") can be transliterated as "Hellēnikē Dēmokratia" by substituting Hellenic alphabet characters with Roman alphabet characters.
Transliteration can form an essential part of transcription
which converts text from one writing system
into another. Transliteration is not concerned with representing the phonemic
s of the original: it only strives to represent the characters accurately.
from one system of writing into another, word by word, or ideally letter by letter. Transliteration attempts to use a one-to-one correspondence and be exact, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words. Ideally, reverse transliteration is possible.
Transliteration is opposed to transcription
, which specifically maps the sounds of one language
to the best matching script of another language. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the goal script, for some specific pair of source and goal language. If the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages, a transliteration may be (almost) the same as a transcription. In practice, there are also some mixed transliteration/transcription systems that transliterate a part of the original script and transcribe the rest.
The transliteration discussed above can be regarded as transliteration in the narrow sense. In a broader sense, the word transliteration may include both transliteration in the narrow sense and transcription.
Transliteration of single words is often an informal non-systematic process; many variants of the same word are often used. For example the Hebrew word מַצָּה is rendered in English, according to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, as matzo
, matzah, matso, motsa, motso, maẓẓo, matza, matzho, matzoh, mazzah, motza, and mozza.
, which overlaps with, but differs from, the 26-letter version of the Roman alphabet in which English
is written. Etymologies in English dictionaries often identify Greek words as ancestors of words used in English. Consequently, most such dictionaries transliterate the Greek words into Roman letters
.
In everyday use, words from languages using different characters are often transliterated phonetically to represent the sound, as in the example above, matzo. A common example of non-systematic transliteration is the phrase book
used by visitors to countries with different languages, even if written in the same characters; for example Spanish "¿Hay alguien que hable inglés?" ("Is there someone [here] who speaks English?") may be rendered as "hai AHL-gyehn keh AH-bleh een-GLEHS?".
usage (and since the Roman Imperial period), the letters <η> <ι> <υ> and the letter combinations <ει> <oι> <υι> may be pronounced [i]. When so pronounced, a modern transcription renders them all as <i>, but a transliteration still distinguishes them, for example by transliterating to <ē> <i> <y> and <ei> <oi> <yi>. (As the original Greek pronunciation of <η> is believed to have been [ɛː],
the following example uses the character appropriate for an ancient Greek transliteration or transcription <ē>, an <e> with a macron
.) On the other hand, <ευ> is sometimes pronounced [ev] and sometimes [ef], depending on the following sound. A transcription distinguishes them, but this is no requirement for a transliteration.
Some examples or "partial transliterations" are words like "bishop" from the Greek word "episkopoi" and the word "deacon" which is partially transliterated from the Greek word "diakonos".
but on the uvula
. Pronunciation varies between different languages, and different dialects of the same language. The consonant is sometimes transliterated into "g", sometimes "k", and sometimes "q" in English. Another example is the Russian letter "Х" (kha), pronounced similarly to the letter "j" in Spanish. It is pronounced as the voiceless velar fricative
/x/, like the Scottish pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "loch". This sound is not present in most forms of English, and is often transliterated as "kh", as in Nikita Khrushchev
. Many languages have phonemic sounds, such as click consonant
s, which are quite unlike any phoneme in the language into which they are being transliterated.
Some languages and scripts present particular difficulties to transcribers. These are discussed on separate pages.
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another
Conversion of scripts
The conversion of scripts or writing is a procedure of replacing text written in one script or writing system with the characters of another script or system in order to make the text legible for users of another language or script....
. For instance, the Greek expression "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" (meaning "Hellenic Republic") can be transliterated as "Hellēnikē Dēmokratia" by substituting Hellenic alphabet characters with Roman alphabet characters.
Transliteration can form an essential part of transcription
Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
which converts text from one writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
into another. Transliteration is not concerned with representing the phonemic
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s of the original: it only strives to represent the characters accurately.
Definitions
From an information-theoretical point of view, systematic transliteration is a mappingMap (mathematics)
In most of mathematics and in some related technical fields, the term mapping, usually shortened to map, is either a synonym for function, or denotes a particular kind of function which is important in that branch, or denotes something conceptually similar to a function.In graph theory, a map is a...
from one system of writing into another, word by word, or ideally letter by letter. Transliteration attempts to use a one-to-one correspondence and be exact, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words. Ideally, reverse transliteration is possible.
Transliteration is opposed to transcription
Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
, which specifically maps the sounds of one language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
to the best matching script of another language. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the goal script, for some specific pair of source and goal language. If the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages, a transliteration may be (almost) the same as a transcription. In practice, there are also some mixed transliteration/transcription systems that transliterate a part of the original script and transcribe the rest.
The transliteration discussed above can be regarded as transliteration in the narrow sense. In a broader sense, the word transliteration may include both transliteration in the narrow sense and transcription.
Transliteration of single words is often an informal non-systematic process; many variants of the same word are often used. For example the Hebrew word מַצָּה is rendered in English, according to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, as matzo
Matzo
Matzo or matzah is an unleavened bread traditionally eaten by Jews during the week-long Passover holiday, when eating chametz—bread and other food which is made with leavened grain—is forbidden according to Jewish law. Currently, the most ubiquitous type of Matzo is the traditional Ashkenazic...
, matzah, matso, motsa, motso, maẓẓo, matza, matzho, matzoh, mazzah, motza, and mozza.
Uses
For example, the Greek language is written in the 24-letter Greek alphabetGreek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, which overlaps with, but differs from, the 26-letter version of the Roman alphabet in which English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
is written. Etymologies in English dictionaries often identify Greek words as ancestors of words used in English. Consequently, most such dictionaries transliterate the Greek words into Roman letters
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
.
In everyday use, words from languages using different characters are often transliterated phonetically to represent the sound, as in the example above, matzo. A common example of non-systematic transliteration is the phrase book
Phrase book
A phrase book is a collection of ready-made phrases, usually for a foreign language along with a translation, indexed and often in the form of questions and answers.- Structure :...
used by visitors to countries with different languages, even if written in the same characters; for example Spanish "¿Hay alguien que hable inglés?" ("Is there someone [here] who speaks English?") may be rendered as "hai AHL-gyehn keh AH-bleh een-GLEHS?".
Difference from transcription
In Modern GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
usage (and since the Roman Imperial period), the letters <η> <ι> <υ> and the letter combinations <ει> <oι> <υι> may be pronounced [i]. When so pronounced, a modern transcription renders them all as <i>, but a transliteration still distinguishes them, for example by transliterating to <ē> <i> <y> and <ei> <oi> <yi>. (As the original Greek pronunciation of <η> is believed to have been [ɛː],
the following example uses the character appropriate for an ancient Greek transliteration or transcription <ē>, an <e> with a macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
.) On the other hand, <ευ> is sometimes pronounced [ev] and sometimes [ef], depending on the following sound. A transcription distinguishes them, but this is no requirement for a transliteration.
| Greek word | Transliteration | Transcription | English translation |
|---|---|---|---|
Partial transliteration
There is also another type of transliteration that is not full, but partial or quasi. A source word can be transliterated by first identifying all the applicable prefix and suffix segments based on the letters in the source word. All of these segments, in combination constitute a list of potential partial transliterations. So a partial transliteration can include only prefix or only suffix segments. A partial transliteration will also include some unmapped letters of the source word, namely those letters between the end of the prefix and the beginning of the suffix. The partial transliteration can be “filled in” by applying additional segment maps. Applying the segment maps can produce additional transliterations if more than one segment mapping applies to a particular combination of characters in the source word.Some examples or "partial transliterations" are words like "bishop" from the Greek word "episkopoi" and the word "deacon" which is partially transliterated from the Greek word "diakonos".
Challenges
A simple example of difficulties in transliteration is the voiceless uvular plosive used in Arabic and other languages. It is pronounced approximately like English [k], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palateSoft palate
The soft palate is the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is distinguished from the hard palate at the front of the mouth in that it does not contain bone....
but on the uvula
Uvula
The palatine uvula, usually referred to as simply the uvula , is the conic projection from the posterior edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of connective tissue containing a number of racemose glands, and some muscular fibers .-Function in language:The uvula plays a role in the...
. Pronunciation varies between different languages, and different dialects of the same language. The consonant is sometimes transliterated into "g", sometimes "k", and sometimes "q" in English. Another example is the Russian letter "Х" (kha), pronounced similarly to the letter "j" in Spanish. It is pronounced as the voiceless velar fricative
Voiceless velar fricative
The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....
/x/, like the Scottish pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "loch". This sound is not present in most forms of English, and is often transliterated as "kh", as in Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
. Many languages have phonemic sounds, such as click consonant
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
s, which are quite unlike any phoneme in the language into which they are being transliterated.
Some languages and scripts present particular difficulties to transcribers. These are discussed on separate pages.
- Ancient Near EastAncient Near EastThe ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Iran The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia...
- Transliterating cuneiform languages
- Transliteration of ancient EgyptianTransliteration of ancient EgyptianIn the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and demotic counterparts...
(see also Egyptian hieroglyphs) - hieroglyphic Luwian
- Armenian languageArmenian languageThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
- Avestan
- Brahmic familyBrahmic familyThe Brahmic or Indic scripts are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia , Southeast Asia, and parts of Central and East Asia, and are descended from the Brāhmī script of the ancient Indian subcontinent...
- DevanagariDevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
: see Devanagari transliterationDevanagari transliterationThere are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī to the Roman script, which is a process also known as Romanization in the Indian subcontinent... - PaliPáli- External links :* *...
- TocharianTocharian languagesTocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
- MalayalamMalayalam languageMalayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...
: see Romanization of MalayalamRomanization of MalayalamThere are several romanization schemes for the Malayalam script, including ISO 15919 and Mozhi.-ASCII schemes:In the late 20th century, typesetting Malayalam on computers became an issue. Lacking diacritics in keyboards led to the innovation of ASCII only romanization schemes. ASCII only schemes...
- Devanagari
- Chinese languageChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
- transliteration into Chinese charactersTransliteration into Chinese charactersIn Chinese, transcription is known as yīnyì or yìmíng . While it is common to see foreign names left in their original forms in a Chinese text, it is also common to transcribe foreign proper nouns into Chinese characters....
- romanization of ChineseRomanization of ChineseThe romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
- Cyrillization of Chinese
- transliteration into Chinese characters
- Click languagesClick consonantClicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
of Africa- Khoisan languagesKhoisan languagesThe Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion...
- Bantu languagesBantu languagesThe Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
- Khoisan languages
- Greek languageGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
- Transliteration of Greek to the Latin AlphabetTransliteration of Greek to the Latin alphabetRomanization of Greek is the representation of Greek language texts, that are usually written in the Greek alphabet, with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so...
- Greek alphabetGreek alphabetThe Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
- List of Greek words with English derivatives
- Linear BLinear BLinear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, an early form of Greek. It pre-dated the Greek alphabet by several centuries and seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization...
- GreeklishGreeklishGreeklish, a portmanteau of the words Greek and English, also known as Grenglish, Latinoellinika/Λατινοελληνικά or ASCII Greek, is the Greek language written using the Latin alphabet...
- Transliteration of Greek to the Latin Alphabet
- Japanese languageJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
- Romanization of JapaneseRomanization of JapaneseThe romanization of Japanese is the application of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is known as , less strictly romaji, literally "Roman letters", sometimes incorrectly transliterated as romanji or rōmanji. There are several different romanization systems...
- Cyrillization of JapaneseCyrillization of JapaneseCyrillization of Japanese is the practice of expressing Japanese sounds using Cyrillic characters. It is commonly accepted in Russia.Below is a cyrillization system for the Japanese language known as the Yevgeny Polivanov system...
- Romanization of Japanese
- Korean languageKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
- McCune-ReischauerMcCune-ReischauerMcCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced McCune–Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000...
- Revised Romanization of KoreanRevised Romanization of KoreanThe Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea proclaimed by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, replacing the older McCune–Reischauer system...
- McCune-Reischauer
- Persian languagePersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
- Persian alphabet
- Cyrillic alphabetTajik alphabetThe Tajik language has been written in three alphabets over the course of its history: an adaptation of the Arabic script , an adaptation of the Latin script, and an adaptation of the Cyrillic script...
- Romanization of PersianRomanization of PersianRomanization of Persian is the means by which the Persian language is represented using the Latin alphabet. Several different romanization schemes exist, each with its own set of rules driven by its own set of ideological goals.-Romanization paradigms:...
- Persian chat alphabetFingilishPenglish, Pinglish, Fingilish or Fargelisi is a term used to describe the way Persian words are written using the Latin alphabet , or generally the casual romanization of Persian words popularized after computers, emailing and online chat became...
- Cyrillic alphabet
- Persian alphabet
- Semitic languagesSemitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
- Ugaritic alphabetUgaritic alphabetThe Ugaritic script is a cuneiform abjad used from around 1400 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit , Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters...
- Hebrew alphabetHebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
- Romanization of HebrewRomanization of HebrewHebrew uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel points. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words....
- Romanization of Hebrew
- Arabic alphabetArabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
- Romanization of Arabic
- Arabic Chat AlphabetArabic Chat AlphabetThe Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabish or Araby, , is an alphabet used to communicate in the Arabic language over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones when the actual Arabic alphabet is unavailable for technical reasons...
- Ugaritic alphabet
- Slavic languages written in the CyrillicCyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
or Glagolitic alphabetGlagolitic alphabetThe Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
s- Romanization of BelarusianRomanization of BelarusianRomanization or Latinization of Belarusian is any system for transliterating written Belarusian from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin.Some of the standard systems for romanizing Belarusian:...
- Romanization of BulgarianRomanization of BulgarianRomanization of Bulgarian is the practice of transliteration of text in the Bulgarian language from its conventional Cyrillic orthography into the Latin alphabet. Romanization can be used for various purposes, such as rendering of proper names and place names in foreign-language contexts, or for...
- Romanization of RussianRomanization of RussianRomanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet...
- Romanization of Macedonian
- Romanization of SerbianRomanization of SerbianThe romanization or latinization of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using Latin letters. Serbian is natively written in its own Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
- Romanization of UkrainianRomanization of UkrainianThe romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....
- Volapuk encodingVolapuk encodingVolapuk encoding or latinitsa is a slang term for rendering the letters of the Cyrillic script with Latin ones...
- Romanization of Belarusian
- Thai languageThai languageThai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
- Royal Thai General System of TranscriptionRoyal Thai General System of TranscriptionThe Royal Thai General System of Transcription is the official system for rendering Thai language words in the Latin alphabet, published by the Royal Institute of Thailand...
- ISO 11940ISO 11940ISO 11940 is an ISO standard for the romanization of the Thai alphabet, published in 1998 and updated in September 2003.-Consonants:The transliteration of the pure consonants is derived from their usual pronunciation as an initial consonant. An unmarked h is used to form digraphs denoting...
- Royal Thai General System of Transcription
Adopted
- Buckwalter transliterationBuckwalter transliterationThe Buckwalter Arabic transliteration was developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter in the 1990s. It is an ASCII only transliteration scheme, representing Arabic orthography strictly one-to-one, unlike the more common romanization schemes that add morphological information not expressed in Arabic script...
- Devanagari transliterationDevanagari transliterationThere are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī to the Roman script, which is a process also known as Romanization in the Indian subcontinent...
- Hans Wehr transliterationHans Wehr transliterationThe Hans Wehr transliteration system is a methodology for transliteration of the Arabic alphabet, used in the Hans Wehr dictionary, with some changes enacted to the system between two editions of the dictionary. The transliteration system uses no digraphs. It is always displayed in the italic style...
- International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
- Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic
- Transliteration of Ancient EgyptianTransliteration of ancient EgyptianIn the field of Egyptology, transliteration is the process of converting texts written in the Egyptian language to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral hieroglyphs or their hieratic and demotic counterparts...
- Transliterations of ManchuTransliterations of ManchuThere are several systems for transliteration of the Manchu alphabet which is used for the Manchu and Sibe languages. These include the Möllendorff transliteration system invented by Paul Georg von Möllendorff, BabelPad transliteration, the transliteration of the New Manchu-Chinese Dictionary, and...
- Wylie transliterationWylie transliterationThe Wylie transliteration scheme is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English language typewriter. It bears the name of Turrell V. Wylie, who described the scheme in an article, A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription, published in 1959...
See also
- List of ISO transliterations
- Phonemic orthographyPhonemic orthographyA phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...
- Phonetic transcriptionPhonetic transcriptionPhonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds . The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, e.g., the International Phonetic Alphabet....
- RomanizationRomanizationIn linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
- Transcription (linguistics)Transcription (linguistics)Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
- substitution cipherSubstitution cipherIn cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are replaced with ciphertext according to a regular system; the "units" may be single letters , pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth...
External links
- Softario Typus Free in-place transliteration tool for RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, HebrewHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and other languages for Windows. - Translitor.net Online Service for Transliteration of Cyrillic Scripts
- Online tool for transliteration of Asian scripts
- Subasa Tamil to Sinhalese language transliteration
- CDACmumbai.in for English to Indian Language Transliteration
- Google, indic
- Google, Arabic
- Malerkotla.co.in, for Hindi to Urdu Transliteration
- malerkotla.co.in, for Urdu to Hindi Transliteration
- OpenOffice.org, for Indic transliteration in OpenOffice
- Transliterate.com, for Greek and Hebrew transliteration
- Latkey, Online transliteration web service
- TransLiteration, Online transliteration service
- Dmoz, Transliteration at DMOZ directory.
- Lingua-Systems, Lingua::Translit, PerlPerlPerl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
module and online service covering a variety of writing systems - OK-Board.com, Multilingual transliteration service. 44 languages.
- SourceForge, AzConvert, open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
program for transliterating Latin and Arabic scripts of Azerbaijani languageAzerbaijani languageAzerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
developed using Qt - Subasa Tamil to Sinhalese language transliteration for Mozilla Firefox users
- Jayapal Chandran, Basic Indian language tansliteration script for programmers and users
- Transliteration Tool, Online transliteration
- Transliteration and search, Transliterate and search in all major non-Latin scripts.
- Indian Language Transliterator for Mozilla Thunderbird, This add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird enables Thunderbird users to compose and send messages in 10 regional Indian languages, using their regular QWERTY keyboard. The languages supported by this add-on are Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Marathi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu.
Documentation
- Unicode Transliteration Guidelines
- ICU User Guide: Transforms International Components for UnicodeInternational Components for UnicodeInternational Components for Unicode is an open source project of mature C/C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization and software globalization. ICU is widely portable to many operating systems and environments. It gives applications the same results on all...
transliteration services - ICU > Demo
- Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts – Collection of Transliteration Tables for many Non-Roman Scripts maintained by Thomas T. Pedersen.
- United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) – working groupWorking groupA working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
on Romanization Systems. - Library of Congress: Romanization
- Transliteration history – history of the transliteration of Slavic languages into Latin alphabets.
- Transliteration of Indic Scripts – How to use ISO 15919
- Hebrew to Arabic Transliteration
- Aramaic to Arabic Transliteration