The Transliteration of Modern Russian for English-Language Publications by J. T. ShawReview by: C. L. DrageThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 49, No. 117 (Oct., 1971), p. 630Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206473 .

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63O THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

claims had no scientific basis. K. I. Timiryazev vigorously opposed Mendel's thinking on genetics and clung to Newtonian physics.

This study is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Russian science and reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the various disciplines at the end of the Tsarist era. The Bolsheviks, when in power, could not

point to a Marxist tradition in science. Lenin, when writing his Material? ism and Empiriocriticism, had to admit that he could not name one leading scientist who was a Marxist. London Martin McCauley

SHORTER NOTICES

Shaw, J. T. The Transliteration of Modern Russian for English-Language Pub? lications. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee, and London, 1967. viii +15 pp.

This pamphlet describes four different systems for transliterating modern Russian depending on the audience for whom a work is designed. The first system is recommended for transliterating personal and place names in works for the general public; the second, the Library of Congress system less diacritics, is proposed for works dealing with the social and natural

sciences; the third, the 'international scholarly system' based on the Czech

alphabet, is for specialist works on Russian philology and literature; and the fourth is the Library of Congress system complete with diacritics.

Descriptions of the four systems and of various mixtures of them (pp. 3-6) are followed by a transliteration chart; and the pamphlet finishes with a section on 'Special Problems and Suggested Solutions', which includes a 'Note on Russian Dating' (p. 15).

The advantage of systems I and II is that they employ no diacritics and can therefore be used on conventional typewriters. In system I, however, it is phonetically misleading to render e by yo (after all, e can stand after hard consonants), -ha by -ia and -be by -ie (jots should be indicated in

both). In system II -hh and -hh are rendered indifferently as -ii despite the fact that the former sequence makes two syllables and the latter one, and

jot is disregarded in -be, transliterated as -e, although not in -Ha, trans? literated as -Ha. In systems III and IV 3 appears as e and e respectively, whose diacritics are both easy to misinterpret. It is not clear why in system IV fl is rendered as ia but -hh as -ita. The careful treatment of the hard and soft signs in both roman and italic in systems II, III and IV is particularly praiseworthy. Any transliteration system must be a compromise between the needs of different classes of readers, the limitations of typewriters and

fidelity to a language's phonetic and orthographic features. Professor Shaw deserves our gratitude for presenting four such compromises with admirable clarity and precision. London C. L. Drage

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