transliterate

Transliterate is the process of converting text from one writing system into another while preserving the original letters, symbols, or phonetic value as much as possible. It differs from translation, which renders meaning in another language, and from transcription, which often aims to reproduce pronunciation rather than spelling. Transliteration is used in linguistics, lexicography, library science, mapmaking, and digital data interchange to render names and terms across scripts.

Transliteration relies on explicit schemes or rules that map characters from one script to another. Some languages have widely used standards. For Cyrillic scripts, ISO 9, ALA-LC, and BGN/PCGN provide reversible mappings; for Korean, Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer are common; for Japanese, Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki, and Nihon-shiki offer different approaches; for Chinese, pinyin is the dominant romanization, with Wade-Giles historically used; for Arabic and Hebrew, standards such as ISO 233 or ISO 259 and related cataloging conventions exist. These schemes are selected to suit different purposes, such as scholarly work, library cataloging, or international communication.

Common challenges include the presence of diacritics, language-specific consonant and vowel clusters, and established local spellings that do not align with new systems. Different transliteration schemes can produce different results for the same source text, affecting consistency across texts and databases. In practice, multiple transliterations may be provided to aid recognition and searchability, especially in multilingual contexts.

Examples illustrate the range: Chinese 汉字 often appear as Hànzì or Hanzi; Russian Москва can be Moskva under certain schemes; Japanese 東京 is Tōkyō in Hepburn or Tokyo in less diacritics-focused systems. Transliteration enables cross-script indexing, cross-cultural communication, and scholarly citation.