ADril 21. 1975

Transliteration, transcription, andtranslation cause lots of work in librariesand information centers-in cataloging,abstracting, indexing, etc. If you’re notexactly clear as to what each of the threeis-where one leaves off and the otherbegins-you’re not alone. Even expertsfrequently confuse them. They don’t con-fuse the actual concepts or definitions.But they do confuse them-especiallytransliteration and transcription-inpractice when they attempt to accomplishboth at the same time.

Tmnslitemtion is the spdiingof wordsfrom one language with characters fromthe alphabet of another. Ideally, it is aone-for-one character-by-character re-placement. It should be a simple mechani-cal process. Too frequently it isn’t—as weshall see.

Tmscnption is the representation ofthe sound of words in a language usingany set of symbols you may care to inventor borrow for the purpose. For example,you can transcribe Russian words usingthe symbols of the international phoneticalphabet (IPA). You can also transcribethem using the letters of the reman alpha-bet. The results will differ. The IPA wasinvented for the purpose of transcribingvarious languages that do not use thereman alphabet or have no afphabets atall. If you do not know the IPA, you willfind it used in most bilinguaf dictionariesto indicate the pronunciation of Englishworda, but rarely those of other hnguageawith more rational and phonetic spellings.!%, for example, any of the excellentCassell’s series of dictionaries.

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One can also transcribe English usingthe reman alphabet. Lots of spelling re-formers wish we would. Instead we con-tinue to spell English in a way that baftlesall of us-native speakers and foreignersalike. English spelling is an historicalmonument, packed with ethnic, linguistic,martial, geopolitical, commercial, andeven scientific memorabilia. As a menu.ment it is absorbingly interesting, but likemonuments in general, it is rather awk-ward for daily use.

Beyond transliteration and transcription is translation, the use of words in onelanguage to express the meaning of wordsin another.

As I have said, there is frequent confu-sion of the three in practice. Translitera-tors, especially if they know the languagethey’re transliterating, have an itch toturn what should be a straight one-for-onetrsnsiitemtion into as much of a tran-scription as possible. When they startscratching the itch, the results can bedisastrous for bibliography. For example,Khrushchev k a transliteration of theRussian name XPYKB. I must add, hasti-ly, that it is an English-speaking person’stransliteration. But to English-speakerswho know Russian, it doesn’t transcribethe sound of the Russian name. To anEnglish-s@er, a better transcriptionwould be something like Kh-ooshtchofl

Whenever that itch to transcribe in-trudes upon what should be the absolutemechanicalness of transliteration, wehave to worry about who has scratchedthe itch. Mr. Khrushchev may beKhrooshtchoffif the scratcher spoke En-

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glish. But he, was probably Chruh-szhtchowif he spoke German. (Note thata proper ‘German’ transliteration wouldbe Chrustschev.)The transcription wouldbe Jmchev in Spanish, Chroesj~ov inDutch, and Crustsciofin Italian. Whentranscriptions of this sort intrude upontransliteration, or when they are used astranslitemtiongthey create havoc in in-ternational information systems.

The transcriptions I’ve given are notproducts of my imagination. They wereand still are generally used in Europeannewspapers. Recently I came across anamusing example of this translitera-tionhmscription confusion, in a singlearticle. Throughout XPY~s is transliter-ated as JG7&?ev, a very nearly correct‘Slavic’ transliteration. The author never-theless always speaks of the khrou-chtcht%kteem and Mr. Koaygin appearsthroughout wholly GalliCized asKoasypk’

The accidental or intended confusionof translitemtion and transcription maybe understandable enough. But some-times they are cont%sed even with transla-tion. This happens when words borrowedfrom one language by another are tmnsli-@ated and/or transcribed back into thelanguage from which they were borrowed.

Borrowings are sometimes calledloan-word. 1 should point out, perhaps,that they are not the same as cognatewords in dfierent languagea. Cognateshave an ultimate common origin, andmay or may not look alike. An example ofborrowing is tit&gentsi% a word we bor-rowed from the Russians, who had bor-rowed ita base (intelfigen$from French.Note that ht&gen@ia is the Englishspelling btelhgentsr~a is the correcttranslitemtion of the Russian word.

There are many such borrowings inRussian. Interes is a transliteration of aword that Russian borrowed fromFrench—it’s not a translation. Likewise,htsdemtis not a misspelled translation ofthe Russian word. It’s a translitemtion ofa borrowed word.

Cognates are a wmpletely differentmatter, and linguistically much more in-teresting. They may turn up looking ex-actly alike, or completely unrecognizable.In the latter case, recognition requireslinguistic training, especially when thelanguagea involved are so distantly relatedthat they use different alphabets. Thus,the almost recognizable baradarand dox-@rare transliterations of the cognate Per-sian words for brother and okughter

Bmt is the Russian cognate of Persian&m&r and English brother Gn theother han4 the Russian word slavo is acognate of the name Clew. That sort ofspecialized knowledge isn’t going to helpyou in dealing with problems oftransliter-ation and translation. Nor are cognates asstraightforwardly or as reliably helpful intranslating languages that are much moreclosely related than English and Persianor English and Russian. It would proba-bly be impossible to count the number oftimes the French word dosage(titmtion,determination, quantitative analysis) hasbeen mistranslated as dosage in Englishbiochemical research documents. Thesame applies to the frequent mistransla-tion of German HerzMIer (cardiacdefect) as heartftiurein medical researchdocuments.

I’ve gone into all of this because trans-litemtion of Russian (that is tmnslitem-tion of the Cyrillic into the remanalphabet) is a major problem, no matterhow simple it ought to be.

Recently I used the AuthorIndexandAddress Dkec@y of CiwrentCbntent@@5’9to locate an address. I came acrosstwo slightly different Russian names. The‘two’ authom had the identical addreas.Furthermore the two articles reportedresearch in the same field. The ‘two’ au-thors’ namea proved to be different trans-Iitemtions of the same name.

How did this ‘mistake’ in CU occur?At 1S1‘we have used the same system oftransliterating Russian for many years, asystem thatagreea in essentials with thatused by the Russians. Naturally we stress

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the importance of consistency. It isn’tsufficient to be ‘almost correct’ about au-thors’ names.z

As it turns out, the mistake was notoriginality made by ISI. We merely perpet-uated it by awepting a transliteration pro-vided by a Soviet journal.

If one comparea the Russian contentspage in question with the English versionprepared in Moscow, one could not possi-bly conclude that any one system of trans-literation had been used. This was surpris-ing, since we assumed that various Sovietdicta on this and other standard proce-dures would be followed. The SovietUnion doea have a standard system forEnglish-language transliteration of Rus-sian, but its application depends uponhuman frailty.’

The error has been corrected now thatwe are aware how inconsistent the Rus-sians can be in deahng with their systemof transliteration. In some instances, thismeans we must generate in toto anothelEnglish contents page. In this process, thecontents page will also become more legi-ble, since the Russian publishing houseswin few prizea for typographic style. Thispractice will prevent a Russian name likelksunshteinfrom being re-Germanized tc

Braunstein.There’s always the odd prob-lem, however. If on occasion a Westeme]by the name of Hilbee-t should publish o]be cited in Soviet journal, he’ll turn up inthe Cyrillic alphabet as Gilbert A consis.tent transliterating system will fail us in a

case like this. It’s unlikely that we’d know

L Fejto J. Chine/f J. R.S.S.;de l’alliance aucontlit [China/USSR; from alliance toconflict], Revue de 1‘Est4(4):207-27, 1973,.

2. Neiawender R. Russian translitera-tion--sound and sense. Special Libmnks53:3741, 1962. — This excellent article reviewsthe various systems of transliterating Ru.mian usedby speakers of EnSlish, and others. As its titleimplies, it discusses also the transcription vs. transli-teration controversy.

in every case whether the man is reallyGilbert or might be Hilbert.

Transliteration from one alphabet toanother must be a simple, algorithmic ormechanical process. I demonstrated thisabout fifteen years ago at a meeting of theAmerican Chemical Society in AtlanticChy. At that time, 1S1 (then known asEugene Gas-field Associates, InformationEngineers) demonstrated truly mechani-cal transliteration of Russian. Withoutknowledge of the Russian language a typ-ist familiar only with the Cyrillic alphabetcopied a Cyrillic text. The typewriter key-board contained Cyrillic characters.However, the typewriter (it was a Flexo-writer) produced a perforated paper tape.Then, the tape was fed into the tape-reading unit of the typewriter, whichprinted out the transliterated text in re-man characters. All of this can easily becombined into a single typing operation.But the operator has to get used to a newtyping rhythm. Several Cyrillic charactersrequire more striking than keying strokea.For example, four characters must strikewhen keying the Cyrillic character uwhich we transliterate with -shclr-.

Obviously the problem of translitera-tion will vanish if the typist is going totranslate the document. It would also van-ish if the Russians published and cited inEnglish, or if they used the reman alpha-bet themselves. That suggestion, alongwith some others regarding Russian andthe scientific literature, I’ll discuss in afollow-up a few weeks from now.

3. Reformmtstdi A A. Transliterataiia rus-skikh tekstov Iatinskimi bykvami ~ransliterationof Russian texts with Latin letters]. Voprosy lazy.

khoznaniia (5)9G103, 1960. — 1 am indebtedfor this reference, and for the various examples ofcontinental transliterations of Khrushchev to Mr.H. Kraus of the Slavic Division of the Library ofCOnSress. The article gives many systems of transli-teration, including one that the author finds suitablefor ‘universal’ use in transliterating Russian withreman characters.

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