Cyrillicusing

Cyrillicusing is the process of rendering text into the Cyrillic script. The term can refer to transliteration from languages that use Latin or other alphabets into Cyrillic, or to applying Cyrillic orthography to a language in a localization or scholarly context. In practice, Cyrillicusing encompasses transliteration, phonetic transcription, and orthographic adaptation.

It is used for languages that officially use Cyrillic scripts—such as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Bashkir—as well as for loanword integration, linguistic research, and digital localization. When converting text, several approaches exist: transliteration maps individual letters between scripts, aiming to be reversible; transcription encodes pronunciation rather than letters; orthographic adaptation follows the spelling conventions of the target language.

Standards and tools vary by language. For Cyrillic-to-Latin direction, standards such as ISO 9 and ALA-LC offer well-documented tables; for Latin-to-Cyrillic, catalogs and language-planning documents provide guidance, and many software libraries implement language-specific rules. In addition, modern Unicode-compliant input methods and fonts facilitate accurate rendering across platforms.

Challenges include ambiguities where Latin letters do not have exact Cyrillic equivalents, homographs that resemble Latin forms, and language-specific phonology that affects pronunciation-based representations. Inconsistent standards across contexts and legacy data can hinder search, indexing, and data interchange.

Examples include rendering the English name "Alexander" as "Александр" in Russian or "Sofia" as "София" in Bulgarian; converting place names like "Moscow" to "Москва" or "Lviv" to "Львів" depending on the chosen language.

See also: Cyrillic alphabet; transliteration; transliteration standards; localization.