Transliteration

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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 as α → 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.

Definitions
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. 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/transcription systems 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, 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 from 1982 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 Arabic letter qāf. It is
pronounced, in literary Arabic,
approximately like English [k], except that
the tongue makes contact not on the soft
palate but on the uvula, but the
pronunciation varies between different
dialects of Arabic. The letter is
sometimes transliterated into "g",
sometimes into "q" and rarely even into
"k" 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

External links
Look up transliteration in Wiktionary, the
free dictionary.

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More spoken articles

International Components for Unicode
transliteration services ICU 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
Tables

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