Transliteration
Methods
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Updated by Raz: |
12/10/2005 |
Number of visits: |
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Source: |
http://www.geocities.com/raz_h_h |
General
Transliteration is used
for writing one language with a character set of another language. The most
known character set is the Latin or Roman letters and the transliteration to
this set is commonly called Romanization.
Since the languages using
the Roman letters are very common in the world, especially English as an
international language, many countries with an official language using another
set have also an official transliteration of the local words to Latin letters
as well as a common transliteration of English and other common foreign words
to the local language’s character set.
There are different
methods of transliteration following different ideas. While setting and
choosing a transliteration system the important objectives should be taken into
account.
Some transliteration
systems are based on the historical developments of the letters and other
characters of the relevant languages. These systems are usually conservative
and are more important for people who professionally deal with the historical
development of writing systems and pronunciation changes along history. Some
transliteration systems are based on a “one to one” replacement of letters and
symbols, to keep the logical structure of the original language. Some
transliteration systems are based on the sounds of the letters and symbols in
order to keep the closest sound to the original while using the transliterated
text.
The most common objective
of using transliteration is when one is not familiar with the original language
or at least with it’s writing system, but wishes to read and use words of or at
least names in the original language. A very common example is tourists and
other visitors to a foreign country. In this case the “user” wishes to be
understood by the locals while reading the transliterated text, without
mastering the writing and pronunciation rules of the local language. This is
also the main objective behind the official transliteration of many countries.
The most accurate and
complete system to represent the correct sounds of a language is the phonetic
script, as can be shown by the one of the International Phonetic Association
(IPA). This system is very efficient for linguistic professional. It can be
also efficiently used, either as a complete system or a partial set, in
assisting people to correctly pronounce foreign words, as can be shown in many
dictionaries. However this system requires a big set of characters and symbols
and pre-knowledge which is not common among most of the people. Therefore the
use of a more limited and well known set like the Roman letters is usually more
useful in daily life.
English, which uses the
Roman letters, is the most common language in the world, and it could be
logical to use the English way of writing and reading as the basis for the
official or the common Romanizing system. However the complex pronunciation of
English vowels, as well as the significant differences between the use of vowel
letters in English and in other European languages make this choice
problematic. Therefore many of the official transliterations to Roman letters
use more standard vowels as in Latin.
After choosing the
sound-keeping objective as the main one for transliteration, it could be an
advantage to keep other features of the original language as much as possible
like a “one to one” replacement or historical relations of the letters as
secondary objectives.
My Romanization for
Thai
In my Romanizing system
for my Thai short dictionary my main objective was to keep the correct sounds of
the Thai language in a clear and easily-understood way. Another important
objective was to keep my system as close as possible to the Thai official
Romanization of The Royal Institute of Thailand. This official Romanization,
commonly used in Thailand, is a simple system, based mainly on standard sounds
of the English (besides sounds which are different than those in
English) and the Latin vowels (with the needed extension, common in
other European languages). However in order to make my dictionary more accurate
by sounds and more readable by people with no previous knowledge I had to solve
the following problems:
No distinguish between
short and long vowels;
No distinguish between “tsh” (ch) and “dsh” (jch) consonants;
No distinguish between “o” and “oa” vowels;
Common mispronunciation of “k”, “kh”, “p”, “ph”, “t”, “th” and “ng” by
foreigners;
No marks for the Thai tones!
In order to solve these
problems I added to the Thai official set few simple and efficient symbols from
the IPA’s international phonetic system, the long vowel mark and the tonal
marks. I also added few subscript letters, including the adjustment of the
additional “h”, the problematic “ch” and “ng” and the short inherent or
additional “a” sound. Finally I added an apostrophe (’) for the glottal stop
and used the “w” and “y” consonants at the end of formally closed syllables
(instead of “o” and “i”) to emphasize the fact that these endings are
considered as final consonants and cannot be followed by another final
consonants.
Following are Some
examples for the problems of some common transliterations of Thai:
The name of today’s king
of Thailand, His Majesty king Rama the 9th is commonly spelled “Bhumibol Adulyadej” (in Thai: ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช) for the Indian origins of the name and the
specific letters used in the Thai version, however according to the official
transliteration of The Royal-Institute it should be spelled “Phumiphon
Adunyadet” and the correct pronunciation in Thai is /phu:mí’phon’àdunyádè:td/.
The name of another very famous
Thai king, His Majesty king Rama the 5th is commonly spelled
“Chulalongkorn” (in Thai: จุฬาลงกรณ์) for the same reasons, however according to the
official transliteration it should be spelled “Chulalongkon” and the
correct pronunciation in Thai is /Jchù’la:loñgkgoa:n/.
The new airport of
Bangkok is spelled on the official publications as “Suvarnabhumi” (in Thai: สุวรรณภูมิ) for the same Indian-origin reasons, however
according to the official transliteration system it should be spelled “Suwannaphum
” (as appears on one of the Thai-Airways’s aircrafts) while the correct
pronunciation in Thai is /sù’wanná’phu:m/.
Bangkok main roads, named
after Thai kings of the latest dynasty are commonly named for foreigners as
“Rama # Rd.”, while the Thai version of the roads’ names is “Phra-Ram #”
pronounced /phrá-ra:m/. Differences of pronunciation between the
conservative style of Romanization and the Thai pronunciation are still common
on many signs of roads and buildings.
From
the above examples it can be clearly shown that the choice of transliteration
of names according to the Indian origins does not serve well the need of
common foreigners to communicate with Thais, which is the main purpose of the
Romanized version ...
Romanization for
Hebrew
The
case of Hebrew is more simple. Since Hebrew pronunciation is closer to the
western languages, since there is no significant distinguish between short and
long vowels in common spoken modern Hebrew, and since as for western languages
there are no specific tones for words, the basic Roman set is quite sufficient
and useful. The official Romanization for Hebrew is based on the common English
consonants and the standard Latin vowels for the same reasons mentioned
above. Some sounds are different than English sounds, few are represented by
additional h (kh) or by the use of apostrophes (’, ', ‘ or `) as needed or by
additional underscore (h, z), and the availability of 2 k-sound
letters (k, q) is used to represent the two different k-sound Hebrew letters
(according to the historical evolution of Latin letters from old Hebrew
letters).
In
fact it could be quite simple to use other Latin letters, not in use by the
official Romanization for Hebrew, in order to achieve a more “one-to-one”
transliteration and to follow better the logical behavior of Hebrew, by
employing the use of letters as in other common European languages instead of
repeating the same letters or using non-standard symbols (for example the use
of “c” instead of “z”, “bh” instead of “v”, xh instead of “h”,
“ph” instead of “f”). However the official Romanization is simple and in common
use for official documents and signs, so I include it as is in my explanations
for the sounds of Hebrew. In a detailed Hebrew document I compare the several
official versions and suggestions and also offer my ideas.
Links:
The Royal
Institute for the Principles
of Romanization for the Thai language and more (Thai)
Principles
of Romanization for the Thai language by The Royal Institute (Thai)
About the transliteration
from Hebrew to Latin by The
Academy of the Hebrew Language (Hebrew)
Status Report for Romanization of
Thai by the UN’s UNGEGN
Working Group
Status Report for Romanization of
Hebrew by the UN’s UNGEGN
Working Group
Status Report for Romanization of
Arabic by the UN’s UNGEGN
Working Group