Arabic transliteration

Encyclopedia : A : AR : ARA : Arabic transliteration

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The Arabic alphabet
History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza {{ar Numerals · Numeration

Due to the fact that the Arabic language has a number of phonemes that have no equivalent in English or other European languages, a number of different transliteration methods have been invented to represent certain Arabic characters, due to various conflicting goals.

Problems

Any transliteration system of Arabic has to make a number of decisions, dependent on its intended field of application. The root of the problem is that the information contained in unvocalized Arabic writing is not sufficient to give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. An exact equivalent of صدام حسين – i.e. ṣdʼm ḥsyn is meaningless to an untrained reader. The "full transliteration" adds information not in the text, which has to be supplied by a speaker of Arabic, ṣaddām ḥusayn. Usually, newspapers and popular books use not a transliteration, but a transcription: instead of translating each written letter they try to reproduce the sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language; compare Omar Khayyam with German Omar Chajjam, both for عمر خيام (unvocalized ʻmr ḫyʼm, vocalized ʻumar ḫayyām).

Most issues around the romanization are about transliterating vs. transcribing–others about, what should be romanized:

• transliteration ignores assimilation (sandhi) of the article: al-shams not the transcribed ash-shams / aš-Šams / asch-Schams (German) / asj-Sjams / ach-chams (French)
• a transliteration must render the "tied tā" (ta marbouta ة) faithfuly, a transcription must render the sound ("a" like any other "a" or "t" like any other "at" — or in a vocalized text nothing vs. t)
• *ISO 233 has a unique symbol, ẗ, ISO/R 233 uses superscript ^h, ^t.
• "broken alif" (alif maqṣura, ى) must be transliterated with a special symbol, but is trancribed like standing alif, when it stands for a long a (ā)
• For nunation is true what is true for the rest: transliteration renders what you see, transcription what you hear.

A transcription may reflect the languages as spoken by the people of Baghdad, or the official Standard as spoken by a preacher in the mosque or a TV news reader. A transcription is free to add phonological (such as vowels) or morphological (such as word boundaries) information. A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine must be able to translate it into Arabic and back.

A transliteration may be criticized as flawed for any of the following reasons:

• A "loose" transliteration is ambiguous, rendering several Arabic phonemes with an identical transliteration, or digraphs for a single phoneme (such as sh) may be confused with two adjacent phonemes;
• Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ` and ' or ʿ and ʾ for ayin and hamza);
• ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes are easy to type but may be considered unaesthetic.

Transliteration standards

• Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary (ISBN 0879500034). [link]
• ISO/R 233 (1961). Replaced by ISO 233 in 1984 but still encountered.
• BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institute. [link]
• SATTS (1970s): One-to-one mapping to Latin Morse equivalents; used by US military.
• UNGEGN (1972): [link]
• DIN-31635 (1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization).
• ISO 233 (1984).
• Qalam (1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case. [link]
• ISO 233-2(1993). Simplified transliteration.
• Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s): Developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter [link]; doesn't require unusual diacritics. [link]
• ALA-LC (1997). [link]
• SAS: Spanish Arabists School (José Antonio Conde and others, early 19th century onwards). [link]

A table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: [link].

Comparison table

Letter	Name	SATTS	UNGEGN	ALA-LC	DIN-31635	ISO 233	ISO/R 233	Qalam	SAS	SM	IPA
ﺀ		E						'	(zero word-initially)	(disappears after 'al-' and where alif wal is.
ﺍ		A						aa	(syllable-initial) (lengthening)	aa
ﺏ		B						b	b	b
ﺕ		T						t	t	t
ﺙ		C						th		ç
ﺝ	jīm, gīm	J						j		j	[ʒ] / [ɡ] / [j]
ﺡ		H						H
ﺥ		O						kh	j	x
ﺩ		D						d	d	d
ﺫ		Z						dh		đ
ﺭ		R						r	r	r
ﺯ		;						z	z	z
ﺱ		S						s	s	s
ﺵ		:						sh
ﺹ		X						S
ﺽ		V						D
ﻁ		U						T
ﻅ		Y						Z		đ̣	[zˁ]
ﻉ		`						`		ř	[ʔˁ]
ﻍ		G						gh	g	ğ	[ʁ]
ﻑ		F						f	f	f
ﻕ		Q						q	q	q
ﻙ		K						k	k	k
ﻝ		L						l	l	l	[lˁ] (in Allah only)
ﻡ		M						m	m	m
ﻥ		N						n	n	n
ﻩ		~						h	h	h
ﻭ		W						w	(consonantal) (lengthening)	w (consonantal) o (lengthening)	[uː]
ﻱ		I						y	(consonantal) (lengthening)	y (consonantal) e (lengthening)	[iː]
ﺁ		AEA
ﺓ		@						h, t	t (zero when in absolute state)	ŧ
ﻯ		/						ae	à	à
ﻻ		LA						la	(with hamza) lā (with lengthening alif)	treated as laam then alif usually: laa
ال		AL						al	al-	al- When assimilation occurs: ál-

Word Processing

Assigning a shortcut key to a symbol or special character allows you to define your own keyboard layout for the Arabic transliteration/ Romanization fonts. Doing so will also allow you to quickly and easily enter symbols with a simple keystroke. This is a necessary step for scholars who want to quickly and efficiently type in Arabic transliteration without switching between keyboards and fonts. All one has to do is take ten minutes to map the Arabic transliteration keys onto their current English keyboard. This process as well as best practices when using transliteration fonts within Microsoft Word on a personal computer are explained in detail in two steps: [Step 6b.ii: Defining your own keyboard layout for Arabic transliteration fonts]and [Step 9b: Free Arabic transliteration fonts and one worth paying for].

Online

Main article: Arabic Chat Alphabet

Online communication is often restricted to an ASCII environment in which not only the Arabic letters themselves but also Roman characters with diacritics are unavailable. This problem is faced by most speakers of languages that use non-Roman alphabets, or heavily modifed ones. An ad hoc solution constists of using Arabic numerals which mirror or resemble the relevant Arabic.

See also

• Arabic language
• Arabic alphabet
• Arabic grammar
• Romanization
• Arabic Chat Alphabet

External links

• [SATTS: Roman-to-Arabic mappings]
• [Omniglot: Arabic alphabet, pronunciation and language]
• [J'raxis·Com: The Arabic Script]
• [Table comparing Romanization systems]
• [Learn the Arabic Script Online]

 

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