Romanization of Bulgarian is the practice of transliteration of text in Bulgarian 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 informal writing of Bulgarian in environments where Cyrillic is not easily available. Official use of romanization by Bulgarian authorities is found, for instance, in identity documents and in road signage. Several different standards of transliteration exist, one of which was chosen and made mandatory for common use by the Bulgarian authorities in a law of 2009.G. Selvelli. Su alcuni aspetti ideologici dei sistemi di traslitterazione degli alfabeti cirillici nei Balcani. Studi Slavistici XII (2015). pp. 159–180. (in Italian)
Features The various romanization systems differ with respect to 12 out of the 30 letters of the modern Bulgarian alphabet. The remaining 18 have consistent mappings in all romanization schemes: а→a, б→b, в→v, г→g, д→d, е→e, з→z, и→i, к→k, л→l, м→m, н→n, о→o, п→p, р→r, с→s, т→t, ф→f. Differences exist with respect to the following: letters involving the glide sound /j/, where some systems use Latin and some Latin : й→j/y, ю→ju/yu, я→ja/ya; also ь→'/j/y. letters denoting palatal/alveolar fricatives and affricates. Here, the choice is mostly between Latin letters with diacritics, as used in many Latin-based orthographies of other Slavic languages, and digraph combinations, as used in English: ж→ž/zh, ч→č/ch, ш→š/sh, щ→št/ŝ/sht. Also, Cyrillic x may be rendered as either , or , and Cyrillic ц as either or . The rendering of щ as or is specific to Bulgarian and differs from the conventions for the East Slavic languages, where it is rendered mostly as or . the letter ъ, which in Bulgarian (unlike Russian, where it is not pronounced at all) denotes a special schwa-like vowel. This sound, which occurs in the first syllable of the country name Bulgaria (България), is variously rendered as , , , , or, in more extreme cases, or . Moreover, Cyrillic у, which is mostly rendered as Latin , is sometimes rendered instead as to distinguish it from ъ, for example in the Danchev Romanization system and based on historical etymology (i.e., the fact that Cyrillic у was descended from Uk, as well as the fact that denotes the u sound in French orthography, and therefore the old French-oriented transliteration used it for у as well.
Standards Three different systems have been adopted officially by Bulgarian authorities at overlapping times.
ISO/R 9:1968 An older system in the tradition of common Slavic scientific transliteration was adopted by the Council of Orthography and Transcription of Geographical Names in Sofia in 1972 and subsequently by the UN in 1977.UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems, ("Bulgarian" version 3.0, March 2009) It is identical to that codified in the ISO norm ISO/R 9:1968. This system uses diacritic letters () as well as and . It was adopted in 1973 as the Bulgarian state standard BDS 1596:1973 which, although still valid formallyBDS 1596:1973 Transliteration of Bulgarian words with Latin characters . Bulgarian Institute for Standardization (BDS) website. is no longer used in practice, having been superseded by the 2009 Transliteration Act.
French-oriented The second system was a French-oriented transliteration of personal and place names in the documents issued by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior for travel abroad, used until 1999.Focus News Agency. 2 February 2008. (in Bulgarian)
English-oriented digraph systems Systems based on a radically different principle, which avoids diacritics and is optimized for compatibility with English sound-letter correspondences,L.L. Ivanov, On the Romanization of Bulgarian and English, Contrastive Linguistics, XXVIII, 2003, 2, pp. 109–118. ; Errata, id., XXIX, 2004, 1, p. 157. have come into official use in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s. These systems characteristically use rather than , and rather than .
Danchev One such system was proposed in Danchev et al.'s English Dictionary of Bulgarian Names of 1989.A. Danchev, M. Holman, E. Dimova and M. Savova. An English Dictionary of Bulgarian Names: Spelling and Pronunciation. Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo Publishers, 1989. 288 pp.
Streamlined System A similar system (differing from the former in the treatment of letters ъ, у, and digraphs ай, ей, ой and уй), called the "Streamlined System" by Ivanov (2003) and Gaidarska (1998),M. Gaidarska. The Current State of the Transliteration of Bulgarian Names into English in Popular Practice, Contrastive Linguistics, XXII, 1998, 112, pp. 69–84. was adopted in 1995Inventaire des outils de romanisation. Bibliothèque et Archives Canada. Ottawa 2006. (in French) (2019 edition, in English)Interscript. Apcbg 1995 Bulgarian. for use in Bulgarian-related place names in Antarctica by the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria.L.L. Ivanov, Toponymic Guidelines for Antarctica, Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria, Sofia, 1995. Another system along similar lines, differing from the Antarctic one only in the treatment of ц ( vs. ), was adopted by the Bulgarian authorities for use in identity documents in 1999; after an amendment in 2000, the official Bulgarian system became identical with that of the Antarctica Commission.
The new official Bulgarian system does not allow for unambiguous mapping back into Cyrillic, since unlike most other systems it does not distinguish between ъ and а (both rendered as a). It also does not distinguish between the digraph values of , and the value of the same Roman strings in rendering accidental clusters of separate Cyrillic letters and , as they occur in words like (izhod) or (shema).L. Ivanov, D. Skordev and D. Dobrev. The New National Standard for the Romanization of Bulgarian. Mathematica Balkanica. New Series Vol. 24, 2010, Fasc. 1–2. pp.121–130.
New Orthographic Dictionary system A modification of the system using a diacritic was proposed in the authoritative New Orthographic Dictionary of the Bulgarian LanguageV. Stankov (ed.). New Orthographic Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Sofia: Hazel Publishers, 2002. p. 51. in 2002, with ъ rendered as ă rather than a. However, that proposal was not adopted for official usage, and failed to become established in popular practice.
Streamlined System with -ia-exception An exception to the rules was introduced by the Bulgarian authorities in 2006, mandating the transliteration of word-final -ия as -ia rather than -iya in given names and geographical names (such as Ilia, Maria and Bulgaria, Sofia, Trakia etc.).Regulations for the issuing of Bulgarian identity documents (Amendment), State Gazette No. 83 of 2006. (in Bulgarian)Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, Ordinance No. 3 of 26 October 2006 on the Transliteration of the Bulgarian Geographical Names in Latin Alphabet, State Gazette # 94, 21 November 2006. (in Bulgarian)United Nations Document E/CONF.98/CRP.71. 17 August 2007. In 2009, a law passed by the Bulgarian parliament made this system mandatory for all official use and some types of private publications, expanding also the application of the ia-exception rule to all -ия in word-final position.State Gazette # 19, 13 March 2009. (in Bulgarian)
The Streamlined system was adopted by UNReport on the Current Status of United Nations Romanization Systems for Geographical Names. Compiled by the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems, February 2013.Romanization System In Bulgaria. Tenth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. New York, 2012. in 2012, and by BGN and PCGNRomanization system for Bulgarian: BGN/PCGN 2013 System. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, September 2014.Romanization system for Bulgarian: BGN/PCGN 2013 Agreement. in 2013.
According to Arenstein, "The international roots of the Bulgarian romanization system strike at the core of one of romanization's most perplexing paradoxes: an impulse to redefine and distinguish national identity while also ensuring the accessibility of that identity to outside groups. In other words, instilling nationalism with a sense of internationalism."
Streamlined System with unambiguous reverse mapping A variant of the Streamlined System allowing for unambiguous mapping back into Cyrillic was proposed by Ivanov, Skordev and Dobrev in 2010 to be used in cases when the retrieval of the original Cyrillic forms is essential. For that purpose, certain Cyrillic letters and combinations of letters are transliterated as follows: ъ→`a, ь→`y, зх→z|h, йа→y|a, йу→y|u, сх→s|h, тс→t|s, тш→t|sh, тщ→t|sht, шт→sh|t, шц→sh|ts, ия (in final position, if the ia-exception rule is applied) →i|a. The standard transliteration form of a given text is obtained from its unambiguously reversible one by simply removing the additional symbols ` (grave accent) and | (vertical bar).
Other Systems along similar lines to the new official Bulgarian system, though with differences regarding the letters х, ъ, ь, ю and я, have also been in use in the ALA-LC Romanization scheme of the Library of Congress, British Standard 2959:1958, the now-superseded 1952 BGN/PCGN romanization of the United States and British geographic naming institutions, and the 1917 system of the British Academy.British Academy. Transliteration of Slavonic: Report of the Committee for the Transliteration into English of Words Belonging to Russian and Other Slavonic Languages. Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII (1917). 20 pp.
The ISO 9 standard, in its 1995 version, has introduced another romanization system that works with a consistent one-to-one reversible mapping, resorting to rare diacritic combinations such as .
The GOST 7.79-2000 "Rules of transliteration of Cyrillic script by Latin alphabet" contains an unambiguous and reversible ASCII-compatible transliteration system for Bulgarian: й→j, х→x, ц→c or cz, ч→ch, ш→sh, щ→sth, ъ→a`, ь→`, ю→yu, я→ya.
Archaic letters The archaic Cyrillic letters ѣ and ѫ, which were part of the pre-1945 orthography of Bulgarian, are variously transcribed as ⟨i͡e, e⟩, as ⟨ya, ě⟩, and as ⟨u̐, ŭǎ⟩, respectively, in the ALA/LC, BGN/PCGN and ISO 9 standards.
Comparison table
Cyrillic ISO 9(1995) ISO 9 (1968)Scientific ALA/LC British Standard (1958) BGN/PCGN(1952) Official Bulgarian (2006);UN (2012);BGN/PCGN (2013) Danchev а a б b в v г g д d е e ж ž zh з z и i й j ĭ y y, i к k л l м m н n о o п p р r с s т t тс t-s t∙s у u ou ф f х h x (ch) kh h ц c t͡s ts ч č ch ш š sh щ ŝ šč št sht ъ ӑ ŭ (ʺ)ALA-LC: Ъ in final position (mainly found in pre-1945 texts) is romanized as .ŭ aexcept in the word Bulgaria (2006 official system)u ь , ' y ю û ju i͡u yu я â ja i͡a yaexcept in word-final -ия (2006 official system)Archaic letters ѫ ǎ ȧ (ʺ) ʺ u̐ ū ŭ ѣ ě i͡e ê e, ya
Romanization sample Original text in Cyrillic BGN/PCGN romanization Scientific transliteration IPA transcription English translation Vsichki hora se razhdat svobodni i ravni po dostoynstvo i prava. Te sa nadareni s razum i savest i sledva da se otnasyat pomezhdu si v duh na bratstvo. Vsički hora se raždat svobodni i ravni po dostojnstvo i prava. Te sa nadareni s razum i sǎvest i sledva da se otnasjat pomeždu si v duh na bratstvo. [ˈfsitʃki ˈxɔrɐ sɛ ˈraʒdɐt svоˈbɔdni i ˈravni pɔ doˈstɔjnstvo i prɐˈva ‖ tɛ sɐ nɐdɐˈrɛni s‿ˈrazom i ˈsɤvɛst i ˈslɛdvɐ dɐ sɛ otˈnasʲɐt promɛʒˈdu si v‿dux nɐ ˈbratstvo ‖] All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Personalized and stylized writing