What it is
Transliteration rewrites an item in the script of the target text. Nothing is translated: the reference is unchanged, the word is the same word, and only its graphical realization moves. The operation is normally applied to names, and it is the point at which a document either becomes usable by a target-script authority or does not.
Franco Aixelá lists it as orthographic adaptation and places it among the conservation strategies, low on his scale of intercultural manipulation. It conserves the source item and merely accommodates the reader's writing system, which is why he groups it with repetition rather than with substitution. Nida approaches the same phenomenon from the phonological side, treating the adaptation of source sounds to the receptor language's sound system as an alteration made in the course of transfer. Newmark does not separate it out at all: for him transliteration is part of transference, the same operation as borrowing, applied where the scripts differ.
Two distinctions run through the practical literature and are worth keeping apart. Transliteration in the strict sense is reversible and maps characters to characters, so the source spelling can be reconstructed from the target string. Transcription approximates the pronunciation for readers of the target language and is not reversible. Most published standards are one or the other, and mixing them within a document produces forms that belong to neither.
When it applies
- The source text is written in a script the target readership does not read, so some conversion is unavoidable.
- The item is a personal name, place name, institution or reference number whose identifying function must survive intact.
- A specific standard is prescribed by the receiving authority, the client or the publication, and compliance is part of the deliverable.
- A bibliographic or archival reference must remain traceable back to its source record.
Examples
RU>EN
- Source: Чайковский
- Target: Tchaikovsky
- Comment: Three defensible strings exist for one name: the traditional English spelling above, which reached English through French; Čajkovskij under ISO 9, character for character and reversible; and Chaykovskiy under BGN/PCGN. None is an error. The error is choosing without stating which convention is in force, or switching between them inside one text.
EL>EN
- Source: Ελευθέριος
- Target: Eleftherios
- Comment: The transcription route, which reflects present-day Greek pronunciation and is the form Greek travel documents carry. The character-mapping route gives Eleutherios, closer to the spelling and further from the sound. In official work the passport form wins, because the reader is matching the translation against an identity document.
AR>EN
- Source: محمد
- Target: Mohamed
- Comment: Scholarly transliteration gives Muḥammad, with diacritics that encode consonants English does not distinguish. National registration practice gives Mohamed, Mohammed and Muhammad to different bearers of the same name. For a birth certificate or a court filing, the spelling in the bearer's own documents is binding and the standard is irrelevant.
Watch out for
The professional rule is short and outranks every standard: in official and certified documents, the spelling that appears in the identity document, register entry or corporate filing takes precedence over any transliteration scheme. Producing a technically impeccable form that does not match the passport creates a person who does not exist as far as the receiving authority is concerned.
- State the convention. Where a standard has been applied, say which one, in a translator's note or a header; where the source document's own spelling has been followed, say that instead.
- Do not transliterate twice. Names that have already passed through a second script, as with Arabic names registered under French or Dutch conventions, should be carried over as registered rather than reconverted from the original.
- Keep diacritics unless the target system cannot store them, and record the loss where they are dropped, since a stripped diacritic can merge two distinct names.
References
- Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating, with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: Brill.
- Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, pp. 81–82.
- Franco Aixelá, J. (1996). "Culture-specific Items in Translation." In R. Álvarez & M. C.-Á. Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 52–78, at pp. 61–64.