The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in the Latin script. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles, cataloging Arabic language works, language education when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by linguists. These formal systems, which often make use of diacritics and non-standard Latin characters, are used in academic settings for the benefit of non-speakers, contrasting with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based Arabic chat alphabet.

Arabic transcription methods can be divided into ad hoc and systematic types. Ad hoc transcription is common in everyday uses such as loanwords and names of people and places, as well as electronic communication in Arabic using Latin script. It does not use a fixed system, borrowing inconsistent orthographic rules from the host language (e.g. representing ش as sh in English, ch in French, or sch in German) and usually omitting diacritics. Ad hoc forms are thus often ambiguous and vary widely: a well-known example is that of the name Muammar Gaddafi (معمر القذافي) – a 1986 column by The Straight Dope lists 32 spellings known from the US Library of Congress, while ABC identified 112 possible spellings – examples include common variants such as Qaddafi, Qadhafi and Gadhafi, or rarely used systematic romanizations such as Qaḏḏāfī (DIN, Wehr, ISO) or Qadhdhāfī (ALA-LC). Systematic transcription provides an unambiguous mapping, often with diacritics, to permit precise reconstruction of the original.

Early Arabic–European dictionaries typically used vocalized Arabic script without transcription (Jacobus Golius, 1653; Georg Freytag, 1837), but some exceptions such as Franciscus a Mesgnien Meninski (1780) provided a system - in the latter, transcription was likely needed because Turkish pronunciation was not always clear from Arabic script. In the 19th century, scholarly study of linguistics generated multiple transcription systems and “universal alphabets”, but Arabic adoption was slow; journals either printed Arabic directly or used ad hoc or journal-specific schemes. A common alphabet was presented in 1895 at the 10th International Congress of Orientalists, yet practices remained fluid into the 20th century despite established features (dotted emphatic consonants; macrons/circumflexes for long vowels). The most recent international standardization attempt was made in 1935 at the 19th International Congress of Orientalists, which adopted the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) system.

Today, three main scientific systems are now standard: the ALA-LC system, the DMG system, and the French IGN system. Additional standards (e.g. DIN 31635, ISO 233, UN geographic system) exist but are little used, hard to access, or closely align with the main systems. The Encyclopaedia of Islam uses its own 19th-century-based system.

Different systems and strategies have been developed to address specific problems inherent in rendering various Arabic varieties in the Latin script. Examples of such problems are the symbols for Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European languages; the means of representing the Arabic definite article, which is always spelled the same way in written Arabic but has numerous pronunciations in the spoken language depending on context; and the representation of short vowels (usually i u or e o, accounting for variations such as Muslim and Moslem or Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohamed).

Method Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct (especially for abjads). Transliteration is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually transcription systems, which represent the sound of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, do not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the following rendering "" of is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example of transliteration would be .

Romanization standards and systems

Early Romanization systems

Early Romanization of the Arabic language was variable across the most widely read bilingual Arabic-European dictionaries of the 17–19th centuries: 1505: Pedro de Alcalá, Vocabulista. A SpanishArabic glossary using a systematic transcription.Edward Lipiński, 2012, Arabic Linguistics: A Historiographic Overview, pages 32–33 1612: Valentin Schindler, Lexicon Pentaglotton: Hebraicum, Chaldicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum, et Arabicum. Arabic lemmas were printed in Hebrew characters. 1613: Franciscus Raphelengius, Lexicon Arabicum, Leiden. The first printed dictionary of the Arabic language in Arabic characters. 1653: Jacobus Golius, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, Leiden. The dominant Arabic dictionary in Europe for almost two centuries. 1830–1837: Georg Freytag, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzubadiique et aliorum libris confectum I–IV, Halle 1863–1893: Edward William Lane, Arabic–English Lexicon, 8 vols, London-Edinburgh. Highly influential, but incomplete (stops at Kaf)

19th and 20th century standardization

In 1889, the Damascene scholar Elias al-Qudsi published in Beirut-based magazine al-Muqtataf a method for writing Arabic words and names in the Latin script, using diacritics. In the same year, the editors of al-Muqtataf, Yaqub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, developed a different model for writing Arabic in Latin letters, partly in response to al-Qudsi’s system.

In 1892, Egyptian Minister of Education Ahmad Zaki Pasha proposed creating a commission to standardise the rendering of Arabic words in English and French, and French words in Arabic, because of inconsistency in official correspondence. Zaki Pasha provided examples from the official government bulletin, the Arabic-French bilingual Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya, in which the French "Capitaine" was rendered as both "qabudān" and "qabṭān", and the French word "poste" was rendered as both "al-busta" and "al-busṭa".

In 1890, orientalist scholar Monier Monier-Williams published a "Proposal for Promoting a Uniform International Method of Transliteration" in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, with respect to Indian and Arabic scripts. With respect to Arabic he noted: …evidently much disagreement still prevails in regard to certain Arabic symbols, as may be seen by comparing Professor Nöldeke's method with that of our scholars… As to the names of persons occurring in Indian languages… that of the Arabian prophet (Muhammad or Mohammed or Mohammed or commonly Mahomed, Mahomet), and names connected with him (Ahmad or Ahmed? Muslim or Moslem? Kurăn or Qurăn or commonly Koran? etc.).

The international committee suggested by Monier-Williams was formed. In 1895, the report of the 10th International Congress of Orientalists was published. It sought to establish a generally accepted system for the transliteration of both the Arabic and Sanskrit alphabets. In recommending the adoption of the report, the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society wrote: The Council is of opinion that it is advisable to take this opportunity of recommending the system thus placed before the world. Much care and pains have been taken over the subject, and there does not seem any probability of further steps being taken, at all events for some years to come… the Council… earnestly recommends all connected with this country who are engaged in Oriental studies to set aside their own individual feelings and predilections, and, as far as possible, to employ this method of transliteration, in order that the very great benefit of a uniform system may be gradually adopted, and Oriental studies may thereby be facilitated.

In 1915, Egyptian magazine al-Hilal reported criticism by the American orientalist William H. Worrell of inconsistent pronunciation of Latin-script street signs, citing the Arabic word for “street”, shāriʿ, which appeared as "chareh", and thus pronounced as "chary," "shary," or "kary" respectively by English, French, and Italian readers. al-Hilal published a chart of what they described as a common transliteration method, including Arabic diacritics, which was similar to the 1895 International Congress of Orientalists version. In the same year, the British established a government commission in Egypt to revise and standardise the transliteration of Arabic terms in English, particularly for maps and official reports – the commission had been primarily concerned with toponyms, whereby "a Frenchman would write a name down in one way, an Englishman in another, and Italian or German according to his own mother tongue and so on".

Modern systems: mixed digraphic and diacritical

BGN/PCGN romanization (1956). UNGEGN (1972). United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or "Variant A of the Amended Beirut System". Adopted from BGN/PCGN. IGN System 1973 or "Variant B of the Amended Beirut System", that conforms to the French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in French-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Lebanon. romanization (2007) is different from UNGEGN in two ways: (1) ظ is d͟h instead of z̧; (2) the cedilla is replaced by a sub-macron (_) in all the characters with the cedilla. ALA-LC (first published 1991), from the American Library Association and the Library of Congress. This romanization is close to the romanization of the and Hans Wehr, which is used internationally in scientific publications by Arabists. IJMES, used by International Journal of Middle East Studies, very similar to ALA-LC. EI, Encyclopaedia of Islam (1st ed., 1913–1938; 2nd ed., 1960–2005).

Fully diacritical DMG (, 1935), adopted at the 19th International Congress of Orientalists in Rome. DIN 31635 (1982), developed by the German Institute for Standardization (). Hans Wehr transliteration (1961, 1994), a modification to DIN 31635. EALL, Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (edited by Kees Versteegh, Brill, 2006–2009). Spanish romanization, identical to DMG/DIN with the exception of three letters: ǧ > ŷ, ḫ > j, ġ > g. ISO 233 (1984), letter-to-letter; vowels are transliterated only if they are shown with diacritics, otherwise they are omitted. ISO 233-2 (1993), simplified transliteration; vowels are always shown. BS 4280 (1968), developed by the British Standards Institution.

ASCII-based ArabTeX (since 1992) has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635.ArabTex User Manual Section 4.1 : ASCII Transliteration Encoding. Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s), developed at ALPNET by Tim Buckwalter; does not require diacritics. Arabic chat alphabet: an ad hoc solution for conveniently entering Arabic using a Latin keyboard.

Comparison table