2. Principles of EG spelling.

interlanguage transcription

Intralanguage

and

Transcription is a useful tool in the description of speech sounds. Its a method of writing down the primary speech sounds in systematic and consistent way. The name means re-write/Latin/. It represents sounds visually by symbols. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) stands for the body of linguists and it was put forward by the International Phonetic Association. There are different types of transcription. The most import. division depends on whether the motivation is primarily phonological or phonetic. 1) Phonologically motivated way of transcription includes the socalled phonemic and allophonic transcription. With the phonemic the attention is focused on the system of phonemic contrast on the accents transcribed. The choice of symbols is limited for one symbol per distinctive sound (phoneme). A phonemic symbol can consist of one graphical written character: /^ / and //, /p/. A symbol may also consist of a diagraph - /t/ (2 graphical written characters). The same symbol is used to represent the given phoneme in all environments it occurs. In the case of all allophonic transcription the focus is on the different realization of the phoneme in different environments; a number of other symbols called diacritics are used: example p - aspirated p, b - devoiced b. In phonemic transcription the focus is on the distinctive character of the p, i, n. /pIn/, in the allophonic /p/ is realized as aspirated and its there where the focus is / p In/. They both constitute generalizations of given accents and can be regarded as types of systematic transcriptions of speech. 2) The phonetically motivated transcription pays no attention to the phonological value of the sound transcribed- not systematic; phonetically motivated transcriptions are known as general phonetic transcriptions or impressionistic transcriptions and try to register as much detail as we can detect impressionistically. The objective of phonemic transcription is to provide a universal overview of speech. With the phonemic transcription little attention is being paid to the subtleties of pronunciation. It is important to identify in the broader terms the distinctive sounds (not interested how /p/ or /i/ is pronounced but it is important to identify the number of the sounds) - broad transcription. The function of each symbol is to signal its contrastiveness or distinctiveness.

Allophonic and general phonetic transcription try to show more or less narrowly how sounds are articulated in the flow of speech, for example titles phonemically /taItlz/, phonetic t z}t /t/dark fully voiced, // dark devoiced, // aspiration and affixation. Narrow transcription is typically used in pathological speech and in the early stages of phonological investigation (ex. new language). We also have qualitative and quantitative transcription bit is different from beat (/I/ qualitative /i/; /i/ quantitative /i:/). Sometimes we have diactrics (on the top of the Roman letters-small added marks t). There are 3 major ways of rendering names from 1 lang. to another: translation, transliteration, and transcription: 1. translation this is the oldest method, direct translation of the names: e.g. Great Britain ; Golden Sands ; Sunny Beach . 2. transliteration this is the substitution of the graphemes of one language with the graphemes of another. A grapheme is not quite the same as a letter from the alphabet. The grapheme is the smallest contrastive unit of written lang., which is realized by allographs. A grapheme may consist of more than one symbol: eg. // s ( ), ch (in French), sh (English), etc. a combination of letters may stand for (function) in the same way as one grapheme; different letter-combinations may correspond to 1 phoneme: eg. /i:/ may be written as e, ea, ee, ie and others. Different phonemes may be rendered by one and the same grapheme (a grapheme may stand for different phonemes), e.g. a //, /o/, /ei/, /o:/ Transliteration is the main way to render Bulgarian names into English. 3. transcription this is the major way of rendering English names into BG. There is a high degree of discrepancy between orthography and pronunciation in English, but the aim of transcription is to try and preserve the sounding system. There are 2 kinds of transcription: intralingual (when we transcribe written symbols of one language using other written symbols in the same language; used when we transcribe written language into spoken language using symbols); interlingual transcription (here we dont talk about 1 language only; the

written s-m of 1 lang. is used to render names with the written sm of another lang.). With interlingual transcription we talk about a source language - names from this lang. will be taken and then will be rendered in another lang. language-receiver (target/receptor). The alphabet of the lang.-receiver will be used to render the names from the source lang. Rendering of English names into Bulgarian TRANSCRIPTION There are some principles that should be observed when we try to render names from English (source lang.) into BG (receptor). The guiding principle with transcription is that the BG rendition should reflect as closely as possible the pronunciation of the name in EG. 1) Phonetic similarity phonetic analysis aims at establishing the similarities and differences b/n the sounds of both lang. This is usu. achieved by relying on the acoustic perceptions of the researcher or it may be done in a laboratory. The names in the language-receiver should sound as similar as possible to the sounding of the same names in the source-language. This principle is called phonetic similarity. 2) Phonological analysis the major aim of this analysis will be to compare the systems of phonemes of both langs. And to establish the number and the ch-r of the existing phonological oppositions and try to decide which oppositions in EG can be preserved in BG and how this should be done. We should try and preserve as many oppositions as possible b/se names that are different in the source lang. (EG) should not coincide in the langreceiver (BG) e.g. Stratford vs Stretford. 3) Peculiarities in spelling and pronunciation in the target lang. (BG) should be avoided as much as possible. These peculiarities are expressed by the fact that each lang. has specific sound- and letter-combinations that are typical for it and these may sound or seem weird in the receptor lang. In this case we should keep in mind the aesthetic function of lang., not only the communicative one. Sound combinations which sound and look unnatural in BG should be avoided. The fact that some combinations that are typical for the source lang. but untypical for the lang. receiver may lead to this that some of the untypical sound combinations may acquire different stylistic and semantic associations in the lang. receiver that are absent from the source-lang.: e.g. If we render the English name Elizabeth with the form , this form will invariably attract the attention of the BG reader. This may cause a peculiat reaction confusion,

amazement, laughter, or irritaion. This may be avoided by using the form which is close enough to the English one. Transcriptions that dont meet the requirements of obeying the peculiarities of the source-lang. may stick out in the text and thus divert the attention of the reader from the texts content. As a result of 1-3 there may be 1 or more possible variants. 4) Easy retrieval even after the first 3 requirements have been met, there may again be 2 or more possible variants for one and the same name. In these cases we should choose the one that is closest to the English one (the one that favours back transcription more): e.g. Cambell // a/e if we choose e we will get and if we have to turn it back into EG well come up with Kemble, which is different. We should never forget tradition or the established public usage. Well-established names cant be changed to meet this criterion e.g. Shakespeare will never be in BG, Chicago will never be in BG 5) Economy and simplicity when we have to choose from 2 or more variations of one and the same transcription we go for the simpler and more economic one. The phonetic criteria are not sufficient. The model consists of several components. It comprises morphological, lexical and phonetic subcomponent which makes the linguistic component. There is also the sociolinguistic (has to do with the established public usage) and psycholinguistic component. Danchevs s-m should conform to several key factors, based on several principles: 1) 1-to-1 interlingual graphemic correspondence an attempt has been made to render any given grapheme of the source lang. (BG) by a single grapheme in the target lang. (EG). The application of this principle of necessity leads to the voidance of certain ambivalent letters of the Latin alphabet (e.g. c) which in most Latin-script langs. have more than one phonetic correspondence. 2) Existing usage (takes into consideration popular practice). When talking of established usage and tradition, one ought to distinguish between traditions concerning individual words ( rhodope Mountains, Boris Christoff (the opera singer)) on the one hand, and on the other, the same name with other referents (Hristov, for any Hristov we use the normal transliteration).
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3) Simplicity and economy this is applied when all the other

rules allow for variation. The final choice is in favour of the simpler and shorter form. 4) Easy retrieval whenever there is hesitation b/n 2 possible variants, the one fascilitating back-transliteration is preferred: e.g. Kunchev, but if we transliterate it Kanchev then when we try to restore the BG name from this variant we will produce .