In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.
Methods There are many consistent or standardized romanization systems. They can be classified by their characteristics. A particular system's characteristics may make it better-suited for various, sometimes contradictory applications, including document retrieval, linguistic analysis, easy readability, faithful representation of pronunciation. Source, or donor language – A system may be tailored to romanize text from a particular language, or a series of languages, or for any language in a particular writing system. A language-specific system typically preserves language features like pronunciation, while the general one may be better for cataloguing international texts. Target, or receiver language – Most systems are intended for an audience that speaks or reads a particular language. (So-called international romanization systems for Cyrillic text are based on central-European alphabets like the Czech and Croatian alphabet.) Simplicity – Since the basic Latin alphabet has a smaller number of letters than many other writing systems, digraphs, diacritics, or special characters must be used to represent them all in Latin script. This affects the ease of creation, digital storage and transmission, reproduction, and reading of the romanized text. Reversibility – Whether or not the original can be restored from the converted text. Some reversible systems allow for an irreversible simplified version.
Transliteration
If the romanization attempts to transliterate the original script, the guiding principle is a one-to-one mapping of characters in the source language into the target script, with less emphasis on how the result sounds when pronounced according to the reader's language. For example, the Nihon-shiki romanization of Japanese allows the informed reader to reconstruct the original Japanese kana syllables with 100% accuracy, but requires additional knowledge for correct pronunciation.
Transcription
Phonemic
Most romanizations are intended to enable the casual reader who is unfamiliar with the original script to pronounce the source language reasonably accurately. Such romanizations follow the principle of phonemic transcription and attempt to render the significant sounds (phonemes) of the original as faithfully as possible in the target language. The popular Hepburn Romanization of Japanese is an example of a transcriptive romanization designed for English speakers.
Phonetic
A phonetic conversion goes one step further and attempts to depict all phones in the source language, sacrificing legibility if necessary by using characters or conventions not found in the target script. In practice such a representation almost never tries to represent every possible allophone—especially those that occur naturally due to coarticulation effects—and instead limits itself to the most significant allophonic distinctions. The International Phonetic Alphabet is the most common system of phonetic transcription.
Compromise For most language pairs, building a usable romanization involves a trade-off between the two extremes. Pure transcriptions are generally not possible, as the source language usually contains sounds and distinctions not found in the target language, but which must be shown for the romanized form to be comprehensible. Furthermore, due to diachronic and synchronic variance no written language represents any spoken language with perfect accuracy and the vocal interpretation of a script may vary by a great degree among languages. In modern times the chain of transcription is usually spoken foreign language, written foreign language, written native language, spoken (read) native language. Reducing the number of those processes, i.e. removing one or both steps of writing, usually leads to more accurate oral articulations. In general, outside a limited audience of scholars, romanizations tend to lean more towards transcription. As an example, consider the Japanese martial art 柔術: the Nihon-shiki romanization zyûzyutu may allow someone who knows Japanese to reconstruct the kana syllables , but most native English speakers, or rather readers, would find it easier to guess the pronunciation from the Hepburn version, jūjutsu.
Romanization of specific writing systems
Ancient Egyptian
Arabic The Arabic script is used to write Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi as well as numerous other languages in the Muslim world, particularly African and Asian languages without alphabets of their own. Romanization standards include the following:
Arabic
(1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary (). BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institution SATTS (1970s): A one-for-one substitution system, a legacy from the Morse code era UNGEGN (1972) DIN 31635 (1982): Developed by the (German Institute for Standardization) ISO 233 (1984). Transliteration. Qalam (1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case ISO 233-2 (1993): Simplified transliteration. Buckwalter transliteration (1990s): Developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter; does not require unusual diacritics ALA-LC (1997) Arabic chat alphabet
Persian
+ Consonants Unicode Persianletter IPA DMG (1969) ALA-LC (1997) BGN/PCGN (1958) EI (1960) EI (2012) UN (1967) UN (2012)Pronunciation U+0627 ʾ, — ʼ, — ʾ - as in uh-oh U+0628 bB as in Bob U+067E pP as in pet U+062A tT as in tall U+062B s̱ s̱ s̄ t͟h ṯ s̄ sS as in sand U+062C ǧ j j d͟j j jJ as in jam U+0686 č ch ch č ch čCh as in Charlie U+062D ḥ ḥ ḩ/ḥ ḥ ḩ hH as in holiday U+062E ḫ kh kh k͟h ḵ kh xsomewhat resembling German Ch U+062F dD as in Dave U+0630 ẕ ẕ z̄ d͟h ḏ z̄ zZ as in zero U+0631 rR as in rabbit U+0632 zZ as in zero U+0698 ž zh zh z͟h ž zh žS as in television or G as in genre U+0633 sS as in Sam U+0634 š sh sh s͟h š sh šSh as in sheep U+0635 ṣ ṣ ş/ṣ ṣ ş sS as in Sam U+0636 ż z̤ ẕ ḍ ż ẕ zZ as in zero U+0637 ṭ ṭ ţ/ṭ ṭ ţ tt as in tank U+0638 ẓ ẓ z̧/ẓ ẓ ẓ z̧ zZ as in zero U+0639 ʿ ʻ ʼ ʻ ʻ ʿ ʿ _____ U+063A ġ gh gh g͟h ḡ gh qsomewhat resembling French R U+0641 fF as in Fred U+0642 q ḳ qsomewhat resembling French R U+06A9 kC as in card U+06AF gG as in go U+0644 lL as in lamp U+0645 mM as in Michael U+0646 nN as in name U+0648 v v, w vV as in vision U+0647 h h h h h hH as in hot U+0629 — h — t h — — U+06CC yY as in Yale U+0621 ʾ ʼ ʾ U+0623 ʾ ʼ ʾ U+0624 ʾ ʼ ʾ U+0626 ʾ ʼ ʾ
+ Vowels Unicode Final Medial Initial Isolated IPA DMG (1969) ALA-LC (1997) BGN/PCGN (1958) EI (2012) UN (1967) UN (2012)Pronunciation U+064E a a a a a aA as in cat U+064F o o o u o oO as in go U+0648 U+064F — — o o o u o oO as in go U+0650 e i e e e eE as in ten U+064E U+0627 ā ā ā ā ā āO as in hot U+0622 ā, ʾā ā, ʼā ā ā ā āO as in hot U+064E U+06CC — — — ā á á ā á āO as in hot U+06CC U+0670 — — — ā á á ā ā āO as in hot U+064F U+0648 ū ū ū u, ō ū uU as in actual U+0650 U+06CC ī ī ī i, ē ī iY as in happy U+064E U+0648 au aw ow ow, aw ow owO as in go U+064E U+06CC ai ay ey ey, ay ey eyAy as in play U+064E U+06CC — — — –e, –ye –i, –yi –e, –ye –e, –ye –e, –ye –e, –yeYe as in yes U+06C0 — — — –ye –ʼi –ye –ye –ye –yeYe as in yes
Notes:
Armenian
Georgian
Georgian letter IPA National system (2002) BGN/PCGN (1981–2009) ISO 9984 (1996) ALA-LC (1997) Unofficial system Kartvelo translit NGR2 ა a a a a a a a ბ b b b b b b b გ g g g g g g g დ d d d d d d d ე e e e e e e e ვ v v v v v v v ზ z z z z z z z ჱ ey ē ē é ej ẽ თ t tʼ t̕ tʻ T or t t t / t̊ ი i i i i i i i კ kʼ k k k k ǩ k̉ ლ l l l l l l l მ m m m m m m m ნ n n n n n n n ჲ j y y j ĩო o o o o o o o პ pʼ p p p p p̌ p̉ ჟ zh zh ž ž J, zh or j ž g̃ რ r r r r r r r ს s s s s s s s ტ tʼ t t t t t̆ t̉ ჳ w w ŭ f̃უ u u u u u u u ფ p pʼ p̕ pʻ p or f p p / p̊ქ k kʼ k̕ kʻ q or k q or k k / k̊ღ gh gh ḡ ġ g, gh or R g, gh or R q̃ ყ qʼ q q q y q qშ sh sh š š sh or S š xჩ ch chʼ č̕ čʻ ch or C č c̃ც ts tsʼ c̕ cʻ c or ts c c ძ dz dz j ż dz or Z ʒ d̃ წ tsʼ ts c c w, c or ts ʃ c̉ ჭ chʼ ch č č W, ch or tch ʃ̌ j̉ ხ kh kh x x x or kh (rarely) x k̃ ჴ qʼ ẖ x̣ q̌ q̊ჯ j j ǰ j j - jჰ h h h h h h hჵ ō ō ȯ h̃
Notes:
Greek
There are romanization systems for both Modern and Ancient Greek. ALA-LC Beta Code Greeklish ISO 843 (1997)
Hebrew
The Hebrew alphabet is romanized using several standards: ANSI Z39.25 (1975) UNGEGN (1977) ISO 259 (1984): Transliteration. ISO 259-2 (1994): Simplified transliteration. ISO/DIS 259-3: Phonemic transcription. ALA-LC
Indic (Brahmic) scripts
The Brahmic family of abugidas is used for languages of the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia. There is a long tradition in the west to study Sanskrit and other Indic texts in Latin transliteration. Various transliteration conventions have been used for Indic scripts since the time of Sir William Jones. ISO 15919 (2001): A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script. The Devanagari-specific portion is very similar to the academic standard, IAST: "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", and to the United States Library of Congress standard, ALA-LC, although there are a few differences The National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST Harvard-Kyoto: Uses upper and lower case and doubling of letters, to avoid the use of diacritics, and to restrict the range to 7-bit ASCII. ITRANS: a transliteration scheme into 7-bit ASCII created by Avinash Chopde that used to be prevalent on Usenet. ISCII (1988)
Devanagari–nastaʿlīq (Hindustani) Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language with extreme digraphia and diglossia resulting from the Hindi–Urdu controversy starting in the 1800s. Technically, Hindustani itself is recognized by neither the language community nor any governments. Two standardized registers, Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu, are recognized as official languages in India and Pakistan. However, in practice the situation is, In Pakistan: Standard (Saaf or Khaalis) Urdu is the "high" variety, whereas Hindustani is the "low" variety used by the masses (called Urdu, written in nastaʿlīq script). In India, both Standard (Shuddh) Hindi and Standard (Saaf or Khaalis) Urdu are the "H" varieties (written in devanagari and nastaʿlīq respectively), whereas Hindustani is the "L" variety used by the masses and written in either devanagari or nastaʿlīq (and called 'Hindi' or 'Urdu' respectively).
The digraphia renders any work in either script largely inaccessible to users of the other script, though otherwise Hindustani is a perfectly mutually intelligible language, essentially meaning that any kind of text-based open source collaboration is impossible among devanagari and nastaʿlīq readers.
Initiated in 2011, the Hamari Boli Initiative is a full-scale open-source language planning initiative aimed at Hindustani script, style, status & lexical reform and modernization. One of primary stated objectives of Hamari Boli is to relieve Hindustani of the crippling devanagari–nastaʿlīq digraphia by way of romanization.The News International - Dec 29, 2011 – "Hamari Boli (our language) is perhaps one of the very first serious undertakings to explore, develop and encourage the growth of Roman script in the use of Urdu/Hindi language."
Chinese