Transliteration

Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another[1] that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in
predictable ways (such asα → a, д → d, χ → ch, ն → n or æ → e).

For instance, for the Modern Greek term "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual
transliteration to Latin script is "Ellēnikḗ Dēmokratía", and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated
as "Rossiya".

Transliteration is not primarily concerned with representing the sounds of the original but rather with representing the characters,
ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the above example, λλ is transliterated as 'll', but pronounced /l/; Δ is transliterated as
'D', but pronounced /ð/; and η is transliterated as 'ē', though it is pronounced /i/ (exactly like ι) and is not
long.

Conversely, transcription notes the sounds but not necessarily the spelling. So "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" could be transcribed as
"elinikí ðimokratía", which does not specify which of the /i/ sounds are written as η and which as ι.

Contents
Definitions
Difference from transcription
Challenges
Adopted
See also
References
External links

Definitions
Systematic transliteration is amapping 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. If the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages, a transliteration may be very close to a
transcription. In practice, there are some mixed transliteration/transcriptionsystems that transliterate a part of the original script and
transcribe the rest.

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

Difference from transcription

In Modern Greek (and since the Roman Imperial period), the letters <η> <ι> <υ> and the letter combinations <ει> <oι> <υι> are
pronounced [i] (except when pronounced as semivowels), and a modern transcription renders them all as <i>; but a transliteration
distinguishes them, for example by transliterating to <ē> <i> <y> and <ei> <oi> <yi>. (As the ancient pronunciation of <η> was [ɛː],
it is often transliterated as an <e> with a macron, even for modern texts.) 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.
The initial letter 'h' reflecting the historical rough breathing in words such as Ellēnikē should logically be omitted in transcription
from Koine Greek on,[2] and from transliteration from1982 on, but it is nonetheless frequently encountered.

Greek word Transliteration Transcription English translation

Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Ellēnikē Dēmokratia Elinikí Dhimokratía Hellenic Republic
Ελευθερία Eleutheria Eleftheria Freedom
Ευαγγέλιο Euaggelio Evangelio Gospel
των υιών tōn uiōn ton ion of the sons

Challenges
A simple example of difficulties in transliteration is the voiceless uvular plosiveused in Arabic and other languages. It is pronounced
approximately like English [k], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate 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.[3] Another example is the Russian letter "Х" (kha). 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 consonants, 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 East

Transliterating cuneiform languages

Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian(see also Egyptian hieroglyphs)
hieroglyphic Luwian
Armenian language
Avestan
Brahmic family

Devanagari: see Devanagari transliteration

Pali
Tocharian
Malayalam: see Romanization of Malayalam
Chinese language

Transcription into Chinese characters

romanization of Chinese
Cyrillization of Chinese
Click languages of Africa

Khoisan languages
Bantu languages
English language

Hebraization of English
Greek language

Romanization of Greek
Greek alphabet
Linear B
Greeklish
Japanese language

Romanization of Japanese
 Cyrillization of Japanese
Korean language

Romanization of Korean
Persian language

Persian alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet
Romanization of Persian
Persian chat alphabet
Semitic languages

Ugaritic alphabet
Hebrew alphabet

Romanization of Hebrew
Arabic alphabet

Romanization of Arabic
Arabic chat alphabet
Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic or Glagolitic alphabets

Romanization of Belarusian
Romanization of Bulgarian
Romanization of Russian
Romanization of Macedonian
Romanization of Serbian
Romanization of Ukrainian
Volapuk encoding
Thai language

Romanization of Thai

Adopted
Buckwalter transliteration
Devanagari transliteration
Hans Wehr transliteration
International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic
Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian
Transliterations of Manchu
Wylie transliteration

See also
International Components for Unicode
Latin script
List of ISO transliterations
Orthographic transcription
Phonemic orthography
Phonetic transcription
Romanization
Spread of the Latin script
Substitution cipher
Transcription (linguistics)
References
1. Kharusi, N. S. & Salman, A. (2011) The English Transliteration of Place Names in Oman. Journal of Academic and
Applied Studies Vol. 1(3) September 2011, pp. 1–27 Available online at www.academians.org
2. See Koine Greek phonology.
3. Language log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2989)

External links
International Components for Unicode transliteration servicesICU User Guide: Transforms
Transliteration history – history of the transliteration of Slavic languages into Latin alphabets.
Transliteration of Non-Latin scripts– Collection of transliteration tables for many non-Latin scripts maintained by
Thomas T. Pedersen.
Unicode Transliteration Guidelines
United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)– working group on Romanization Systems.
Library of Congress: Romanization T ables

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ransliteration&oldid=817224897"

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