transliterationmeans

Transliteration means the process of converting text from one writing system into another by representing the original characters with corresponding characters or symbols in the target script. Unlike transcription, which aims to reproduce pronunciation, transliteration focuses on preserving the graphemic identity of the source text, so that the original words can be recovered from the transliteration. In practice, transliteration uses standardized mappings or schemes, sometimes with diacritics to indicate phonetic value or distinctive letters absent in the target script. No single global standard exists; most languages with multiple scripts rely on country- or discipline-specific systems.

Common examples include the ISO 9 standard for Cyrillic, which provides a reversible, one-to-one mapping for cataloging; for Chinese, pinyin represents the standard Latinization of Mandarin characters for modern usage, alongside older systems like Wade-Giles; for Japanese, Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki romanizations render kana and kanji readings; Korean uses Revised Romanization; Arabic and Hebrew have several cataloging schemes such as ALA-LC romanization tables and ISO standards. In library science, transliteration is essential for indexing, cross-language search, and metadata interoperability; in linguistics and digital processing, it supports data exchange and comparative studies.

Challenges include language-specific sounds without exact Latin equivalents, the need to balance phonetic transparency with stability, and variations in capitalization or diacritics. Selecting a transliteration system depends on purpose: bibliographic indexing, linguistic analysis, or user-facing text rendering.