Transcription and Transliteration

The rewriting or conversion of the characters of a text from one writing system to another
writing system is called transcription or transliteration. For instance, it is possible to
transform a text consisting of Cyrillic, Japanese or Greek letters to the Latin writing system.
Often the transformation of other characters to the Latin writing system is called
romanization or latinization. Of course, also the reverse way is possible, namely the
conversion of a Latin text to another writing system. Transcriptions are used, for instance, to
make a writing system, illegible for one reader, readable by using other characters or to
translate proper names in another writing system.
The following summary shows step by step, how to arrange such a conversion rapidly and
easily, it defines the difference between transliterations and transcriptions and explains all
important things apart from that. As software, the Text Converter is used, with which you can
apply conversions at many files at the same time. The Text Converter supports many
transcriptions and transliterations on its own, which can be assigned with only one click.
Furthermore, it is also possible to create any customized conversion with own rules or edit
the pre-defined ones, to convert texts.
The summary is devided into the following sections. You can simply click on the name of one
of the sections to jump to this part of the text.

Difference between Transcription and Transliteration

Default Transliterations

Default Transcriptions

Customized Transcriptions

Difference between Transcription and Transliteration

A transcription is the conversion of the characters of one language to the characters of
another language in accordance with the pronunciation of the target language. Hence, other
rules, depending on the target language (e.g. German or English), for one and the same source
language can be used. An advantage of the transcription is, that everybody speaking the target
language can also read the converted words of the source language correctly. A disadvantage
is, that a transcription often can not be inverted clearly. The Text Converter supports, for
example, Cyrillic transcription rules for English and German.
In contrast, in the transliteration, each character of the source language is assigned to a
different unique character of the target language, so that an exact inversion is possible. If the
source language consists of more characters than the target language, combinations of
characters (for example KA for Hiragana ) and diacritica (for example for Cyrillic )
can be used. Although in the transliteration, the pronunciation is not as important as in the
transcription, it is often possible to recognize the pronunciation by the used character. The
Text Converter supports some transliterations according to ISO standards, for example

Cyrillic-Latin (ISO 9), Arabic-Latin(ISO 233), Hebrew-Latin(ISO 259), Greek-Latin(ISO

843), Japanese-Latin(ISO 3602), Georgic-Latin(ISO 9984) and Thai-Latin (ISO 11940).
It follows that the difference between transcription and transliteration is that the transcription
reflects the phonetic articulation of words, thus like the words are pronouced. By contrast, the
transliteration is used when a word is transfered from one writing system to another writing
system. The Arabic word for books would therefore be "kataba" in the transcription and
"ktb" in the transliteration.

Default Transliterations
In the Text Converter, you can easily apply some well-known transliterations. After opening
some files, just click on "Transcription and Transliteration" in the column "Actions" on the
right side of the main window. Here you can choose the transliteration in the box "Profiles".
After clicking on a text file in the file list (input area of the software), you should
immediately see the results of your transliteration, which you can save now.
The following transliterations can be done with the Text Converter. With the option "Invert
Transcription", you can carry out a re-transliteration. For instance, with this function it is
possible to transliterate from Cyrillic to Latin instead of Latin to Cyrillic. Please note, that
often not every Latin character has a correspondence in the target writing system, so that this
character will be left. If you do not want to have this problem, you should use a transcription
with full Latin alphabet support (see next section). But a disadvantage of this will be, that it is
often not possible to invert such a transcription clearly.

Cyrillic - Latin (ISO 9): Detailed transliteration of the Cyrillic letters in Latin letters
in accordance with ISO 9 norm.

Arabic - Latin (ISO 233): Transliteration of Arabic characters to Latin according to

the ISO 233 standard.

Hebrew - Latin (ISO 259): Transliteration of Hebrew characters to Latin according

to the ISO 259 standard.

Greek - Latin (ISO 843): Transliteration of Greek letters to Latin letters according to
the standard ISO 843.

Japanese - Latin (ISO 3602): Transliteration of Hiragana and Katakana in Latin

letters in accordance with ISO 3602.

Georgic - Latin (ISO 9984): Transliteration of Georgic letters to Latin letters

according to the standard ISO 9984.

Thai - Latin (ISO 11940): Transliteration of Thai to Latin according to the standard
ISO 11940.

Cyrillic - Latin (Scientific): Scientific transliteration of the Cyrillic letters to Latin

(see this table).

Default Transcriptions
The transcriptions can be applied in the same way like the transliterations in the Text
Converter. After adding some files, simply go to the action "Transcription and
Transliteration" and select your desired transcription in the box "Profiles". The result of the
inscription should already be visible in the preview now.
The following transcriptions can be selected in the Text Converter. Because in some writing
systems there are no unique equivalents for each single Latin character (for example often
letters like Q or X do not happen), other writings are used (for example KS for X), to make it
possible to transcript all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet. Often this can distort the meaning a
little bit and of course, it can lead to equivocality. If you do not want to have this problems,
you should use one of the transliterations (previous section). Then, there are not this
problems, but often not all characters can be transformed.

Hindi - Latin: Transcription of the Hindi letters in Latin letters, see this table.

Cyrillic - Latin (German): Transcription of the Cyrillic letters in Latin letters in

accordance with the German pronunciation. Summary in this table.

Cyrillic - Latin (English): Transcription of the Cyrillic letters in Latin letters in

accordance with the English pronunciation. Summary in this table.

Latin - Arabic (Complete ABC): Transcription of the Latin characters in Arabic

characters. Because the Arabic alphabet does not know any vowels, this transcription
often can not be inverted clearly.

Latin - Georgic (Complete ABC): Exact invertment of the ISO 9984 standard. This
is possible here, because the ISO standard has a unique Georgic character for each
Latin one.

Latin - Greek (Complete ABC): Transcription of the Latin characters to Greek

characters. See this table.

Latin - Hebrew (Complete ABC): Transcription of Latin letters to Hebrew letters.

Problematic, since there are no vowels in Hebrew and therefore, a re-transcription is
complicated. An overview you can get in this table.

Latin - Hindi (Complete ABC): Reversal of the transcription "Hindi - Latin" under
addition of the missing characters.

Latin - Japanese (Hiragana, Complete ABC): Reversal of the ISO norm 3602 with
completion of the missing letters. Problematic, since in Japanese there are not all
letters and often there are only combinations of letters like MA, MI, ME, MO and
MU. Hence, often combinations must be used for single letters (for example SU for S
because there is no single S in Hiragana), to be able to transcript the whole alphabet.
Of course, a text transcribed in this way loses its pronunciation, but ther are no other
possibilities.

Latin - Japanese (Katakana, Complete ABC): The same difficulty as in the case of
Hiragana.

Latin - Cyrillic (German, Complete ABC): Inversion of the transcription of the

Cyrillic letters to Latin letters according to the German pronunciation in addition with
all of the missing letters.

Latin - Cyrillic (English, Complete ABC): Inversion of the transcription of the

Cyrillic letters to Latin letters according to the English pronunciation in addition with
all of the missing letters.

Latin - Cyrillic (Scientific, Complete ABC): Inversion of the scientific

transliteration with addition of the missing letters.

Latin - Thai (Complete ABC): Inversion of the standard ISO 11940 in addition with
the missing letters.

Customized Transcriptions
Behind the transcriptions and transliterations introduced in the last two sections, which can be
applied with only one click in the Text Converter, it is also possible to create and use any
customised transcriptions. These transcriptions can be managed under "Transcription and
Transliteration > Customize", where you can also change and edit the existing profiles. When
working with customised profiles, you have to take into account the following things:

All transcriptions are saved as normal text files (format is arbitrary) in a folder named
"Transliteration" in the same directory like the Text Converter. All files, saved in this
folder, will be loaded at the start of the software and will be displayed in the list
"Profiles", where you can also select the predefined profiles. So, you can choose your
own transcriptions in the same way, you also select one of the other profiles. Also in
the administration of the profiles of all of the saved transcriptions are shown, so that
you can work on them at any time.

The text files are all built up in the same way. In every single line, there is one rule for
the transcription. In this line, the old and the new string is separated by the character |.
So, for instance, a line with "A|B" means, that in this transcription an A is replaced by
a B. Of course, it is also possible to replace strings by nothing ("A|") or to replace
combined characters ("CH|X"). You should notice, that in the transcription the lines
will be worked off from the first to the last line. Hence, if you would like to introduce
a rule like ("CH|X") but you also have rules for the single letters C and H, the rule for
CH must be appear before the rules for C and H, because otherwise CH will be
replaced by the single letters.

The text files can be edited with an arbitrary editor or you can use the profiles
manager under "Transcription and Transliteration > Customize", where you can work
on all currently loaded files as well as all predefined transcriptions and
transliterations. This window makes it also possible to have a look at the predefined
rules and to edit them if necessary.

Considering these points, you can fastly and simply create your own transcriptions, for
example for individual purposes or for completely different writing systems, because all
Unicode characters are supported by the Text Converter. If you create a list in the Text
Converter, this list will be visible in the profiles after saving the list with "Save". The
predefined transcriptions can not be changed as such, so you have to save these lists as new
ones, if you want to change them. For that you can simply write a new name in the box, in
which you can select the profiles. Under this name, the new or the changed profile is saved in
the directory "Transliteration".
Another possibility offers the function "Inverse List" in the same window. With this function
it is possible to immediately inverse the complete list, to be able to create a changed retransciption. The rule "A|B" becomes the rule "B|A". If you should have created a very
important transcription, you are welcome to send us this list for the publication in the next
version of the Text Converter.