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Not to be confused with translation.
"Transliterate" redirects here. For the concept of being literate in all media, see Transliteracy.

Transliteration is the conversion of a text from one script to another.[1]

For instance, a Latin transliteration of the Greek phrase "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", usually translated as 'Hellenic Republic', is "Ellēnikḗ Dēmokratía".

Transliteration is not concerned with representing the sounds of the original, only the characters, ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the above example, λλ is transliterated as 'll', but pronounced /l/; Δ is transliterated as 'D', but pronounced 'ð'; and η is transliterated as 'ē', though it is pronounced /i/ (exactly like ι) and is not long.






Difference from transcription[edit]


Greek word Transliteration Transcription English translation
Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Hellēnikē Dēmokratia Eliniki Dhimokratia Hellenic Republic
Ελευθερία Eleutheria Eleftheria Freedom
Ευαγγέλιο Euaggelio Evangelio Gospel
των υιών tōn uiōn ton ion of the sons

Partial transliteration[edit]

There is also another type of transliteration that is not full, but partial or quasi. A source word can be transliterated by first identifying all the applicable prefix and suffix segments based on the letters in the source word. All of these segments, in combination constitute a list of potential partial transliterations. So a partial transliteration can include only prefix or only suffix segments. A partial transliteration will also include some unmapped letters of the source word, namely those letters between the end of the prefix and the beginning of the suffix. The partial transliteration can be “filled in” by applying additional segment maps. Applying the segment maps can produce additional transliterations if more than one segment mapping applies to a particular combination of characters in the source word.[3]

Some examples or "partial transliterations" are words like "bishop" via Anglo-Saxon biscep from the Greek word "episkopos" and the word "deacon" which is partially transliterated from the Greek word "diakonos".


A simple example of difficulties in transliteration is the voiceless uvular plosive used in Arabic and other languages. It is pronounced approximately like English [k], except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. Pronunciation varies between different languages, and different dialects of the same language. The consonant is sometimes transliterated into "g", sometimes "k", and sometimes "q" in English.[4] Another example is the Russian letter "Х" (kha), pronounced similarly to the letter "j" in Spanish. It is pronounced as the voiceless velar fricative /x/, like the Scottish pronunciation of ch in "loch". This sound is not present in most forms of English, and is often transliterated as "kh", as in Nikita Khrushchev. Many languages have phonemic sounds, such as click consonants, which are quite unlike any phoneme in the language into which they are being transliterated.



See also[edit]


  2. ^ see Koine Greek phonology
  3. ^ Machine Learning For Transliteration - Transliteration
  4. ^ Language log

"Translation" citation 15: ^ Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", pp. 85–86. "Roger Bacon wrote that if a translation is to be true, the translator must know both languages, as well as the science that he is to translate"

External links[edit]

Online transliteration[edit]