translitteroinnin

Transliteration, referred to in Finnish as translitterointi, is the process of converting text from one writing system into another by representing the characters of the source script with corresponding characters in the target script. The goal is to establish a reversible mapping that preserves the written form of the language as closely as possible, rather than reproducing its pronunciation.

Transliteration differs from transcription, which aims to reproduce sounds or phonetic values. While transliteration emphasizes a letter-for-letter or character-for-character correspondence, transcription focuses on how the language sounds, often producing a different script or set of symbols to indicate pronunciation.

Various standards and schemes guide transliteration, depending on the language pair and use case. Widely used examples include ISO 9 for Cyrillic scripts, ALA-LC romanization tables, and the BGN/PCGN system for geographic names. Other scripts have their own conventions, such as Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Devanagari, with academic systems like IAST for Indic languages and different romanization schemes for Chinese. Some schemes prioritize exact bijective mapping with diacritics, while others favor simplicity for everyday use or computer processing.

Examples of transliteration include Moscow from Russian Москва, rendered as Moskva; Greek Αθήνα becoming Athína; Arabic الحب (al-ḥubb) for “love”; and Hindi भारत becoming Bhārata. In practice, many contexts use a mix of schemes or rely on common, nonstandard spellings.

Applications of transliteration span library cataloging, linguistics, digital indexing, and cross-language search, as well as official documents and passport names. Challenges include multiple competing standards, inconsistent real-world usage, the treatment of diacritics by software, and reconciling historical spellings with modern conventions.