Orthographic transcription

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Orthographic transcription is a transcription method that employs the standard spelling system of each target language. [1] [2]

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Examples of orthographic transcription are "Pushkin" and "Pouchkine", respectively the English and French orthographic transcriptions of the surname "Пу́шкин" in the name Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин (Alexander Pushkin). Thus, each target language (English and French) transcribes the surname according to its own orthography. [2]

Contrast with phonetic transcription, phonemic orthography, transliteration, and translation.

Distinction from transliteration

Transcription as a mapping from sound to script must be distinguished from transliteration, which creates a mapping from one script to another that is designed to match the original script as directly as possible. Standard transcription schemes for linguistic purposes include the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and its ASCII equivalent, SAMPA. Transcription is often confused with transliteration, perhaps due to a common journalistic practice of mixing elements of both in rendering foreign names. The resulting practical transcription is a hybrid that is called both "transcription" and "transliteration" by the general public.

While transliteration only occurs when different scripts are concerned, transcription may very well be used for different languages using the same script. For example, the name of Bulgarian city Търговище is rendered as Тырговиште in Russian, because the letters ъ and щ in Russian have a different function than in Bulgarian. Likewise, some languages using the Latin script use orthographic transcription for all foreign names: George Walker Bush is written Džordžs Volkers Bušs in Latvian (the ending -s marks the nominative case of masculine names, see Latvian declension) and Corc Volker Buş in Azerbaijani.

The table below shows examples of phonetic transcription of the name of the former Russian president known in English as Boris Yeltsin, followed by accepted hybrid forms in various languages. English speakers will pronounce "Boris" differently from the original Russian, so it is a transliteration rather than a transcription in the strict sense.

The same words are likely to be transcribed differently under different systems. For example, the Mandarin Chinese name for the capital of the People's Republic of China is Beijing using the commonly used contemporary system Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, but in the historically significant Wade–Giles system, it is written Pei-Ching.

Practical transcription can be done into a non-alphabetic language too. For example, in a Hong Kong newspaper, George Bush's name is transliterated into two Chinese characters that sound like "Bou-sū" (布殊) by using the characters that mean "cloth" and "special". Similarly, many words from English and other Western European languages are borrowed in Japanese and are transcribed using Katakana, one of the Japanese syllabaries.

Subsequent divergence

After transcribing a word from one language to the script of another language:

This is especially evident for Greek loanwords and proper names. Greek words were historically first transcribed to Latin (according to their old pronunciations), and then loaned into other languages, and finally the loanword has developed according to the rules of the target language. For example, Aristotle is the currently used English form of the name of the philosopher whose name in Greek is spelled  ̓Aριστoτέλης (Aristotélēs), which was transcribed to Latin Aristoteles, from where it was loaned into other languages and followed their linguistic development. (In "classical" Greek of Aristotle's time, lower-case letters were not used, and the name was spelled ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΗΣ.)

Pliocene, a much more recent word, comes from the Greek words πλείων (pleiôn, "more") and καινóς (kainós, "new"), which were first transcribed (Latinised) to plion and caenus[ citation needed ] and then loaned into other languages. (κ became c because there was no k in Latin.)

When this process continues over several languages, it may fail miserably to convey the original pronunciation. One ancient example is the Sanskrit word dhyāna ("contemplation", "meditation") which was transcribed into the Chinese word ch'anna through Buddhist scriptures; next shortened into ch'an. Ch'an (禪), pronounced zen in Japanese, used as the name of the Buddhist sect of "Chan" (Zen Buddhism), was transcribed from Japanese (ゼン zen) to zen in English. Dhyāna to zen is quite a change.[ citation needed ]

Another issue is any subsequent change in "preferred" transcription. For instance, the word describing a philosophy or religion in China was popularized in English as Tao and given the termination -ism to produce an English word Taoism. That transcription reflects the Wade–Giles system. More recent Pinyin transliterations produce Dao and Daoism. (See also Daoism–Taoism romanization issue.)

Transcription and transliteration example: "Boris Yeltsin"

Original Russian textБорис Николаевич Ельцин
Official transliteration ISO 9 (GOST 7.79-2000)Boris Nikolaevič Elʹcin
Scholarly transliteration Boris Nikolaevič Elʼcin
IPA phonetic transcription[bʌˈɾʲisnʲɪkʌˈɫajɪvʲɪt͡ʃʲˈjelʲt͡sɨn]
Examples of the same name rendered in other orthographic systems (sorted by language families; Indo-European languages come first)
Albanian Boris Nikollajeviç Jellcin
Armenian Բորիս Նիկոլաևիչ Ելցին (approx. translit. Boris Nikolaewičʿ Elcʿin)
Bulgarian / Macedonian Борис Николаевич Елцин
Serbo-Croatian Boris Nikolajevič Jeljcin + Борис Николајевич Јељцин
Slovene / Czech Boris Nikolajevič Jelcin
Slovak Boris Nikolajevič Jeľcin
Polish Borys Nikołajewicz Jelcyn
Ukrainian Борис Миколайович Єльцин
Latvian Boriss Nikolajevičs Jeļcins
Lithuanian Boris Nikolajevič Jelcin (Lithuanian form: Borisas Nikolajevičius Jelcinas)
English Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin
German Boris Nikolajewitsch Jelzin
Dutch / Norwegian Boris Nikolajevitsj Jeltsin
Swedish / Danish Boris Nikolajevitj Jeltsin
Greek Μπορίς Νικολάγιεβιτς Γιέλτσιν (approx. translit. Borís Nikoláyevits Yéltsin)
Mahl ބޮރިސް ނިކޮލަޔެވިޗް ޔެލްސިން (approx. translit. Boris Nikolayevich Yelsin)
Sanskrit / Hindi बोरिस् निकोलायेविच् येल्त्सिन् (approx. translit. Boris Nikolāyevic Yeltsin)
Spanish Borís Nikoláyevich Yeltsin
Portuguese Boris Nicoláievitch Iéltsin
Catalan Borís Nikolàievitx Ieltsin
French Boris Nikolaïevitch Ieltsine
Arabic بوريس نيكولايڤيتش يلتسن (approx. translit. Bwrys Nykwlāyvytsh Yltsn)
Hebrew בוריס ניקולאיביץ' ילצין (approx. translit. Bwrys Nyḳwlaybyṣ' Ylṣyn)
Vietnamese Bô-rít Ni-cô-lai-ê-vích En-xin
Filipino Boris Nikoláyevits Yeltsin
Tamil போரிஸ் நிக்கொலாயவிச் யெல்ட்சின் (approx. translit. Pōris Nikkolāyavic Yelṭciṉ)
Japanese ボリス・ニコライェヴィッチ・イェリツィン (approx. translit. Borisu Nikorayevitchi Yeritsin)
Korean 보리스 니콜라예비치 옐친 (approx. translit. Boriseu Nikollayebichi Yelchin)
Thai บอริส นีโคลาเยวิช เยลต์ซิน (approx. translit. Bxris̄ Nīkholāyewich Yelt̒sin)
Chinese (Mandarin) 鲍里斯·尼古拉耶维奇·叶利钦 + Bàolǐsī Nígǔlāyēwéiqí Yèlìqīn (pinyin. This is actually phonetic transcription)
Turkish Boris Nikolayeviç Yeltsin
Hungarian Borisz Nyikolajevics Jelcin
Finnish Boris Nikolajevitš Jeltsin
Estonian Boriss Nikolajevitš Jeltsin

See also

Related Research Articles

The English words Daoism and Taoism are alternative spellings for the same-named Chinese philosophy and religion. The root for Daoism or Taoism is the Chinese word , which was transcribed tao or tau in the earliest systems for the romanization of Chinese and dao or dau in 20th century systems.

The Hebrew alphabet, known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is traditionally an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. In modern Hebrew, vowels are increasingly introduced. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze. It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet.

Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters in predictable ways, such as Greek ⟨α⟩⟨a⟩, Cyrillic ⟨д⟩⟨d⟩, Greek ⟨χ⟩ → the digraph ⟨ch⟩, Armenian ⟨ն⟩⟨n⟩ or Latin ⟨æ⟩⟨ae⟩.

Y, or y, is the 25th and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth vowel letter of the English alphabet. In the English writing system, it mostly represents a vowel and seldom a consonant, and in other orthographies it may represent a vowel or a consonant. Its name in English is wye, plural wyes.

Greeklish, a portmanteau of the words Greek and English, also known as Grenglish, Latinoellinika/Λατινοελληνικά or ASCII Greek, is the Greek language written using the Latin script. Unlike standardized systems of Romanization of Greek, as used internationally for purposes such as rendering Greek proper names or place names, or for bibliographic purposes, the term Greeklish mainly refers to informal, ad-hoc practices of writing Greek text in environments where the use of the Greek alphabet is technically impossible or cumbersome, especially in electronic media. Greeklish was commonly used on the Internet when Greek people communicate by forum, e-mail, IRC, instant messaging and occasionally on SMS, mainly because older operating systems did not support non-Latin writing systems, or in a unicode form like UTF-8. Nowadays most Greek language content appears in the Greek alphabet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romanization</span> Transliteration or transcription to Latin characters

In linguistics, Romanization or romanisation is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.

A caron is a diacritic mark (◌̌) commonly placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation.

Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond to the language's phonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic; it was once mostly phonemic during the Middle English stage, when the modern spellings originated, but spoken English changed rapidly while the orthography was much more stable, resulting in the modern nonphonemic situation. On the contrary the Albanian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, Romanian, Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Finnish, Czech, Latvian, Esperanto, Korean and Swahili orthographic systems come much closer to being consistent phonemic representations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyrillization</span> Transcription of languages into Cyrillic script

Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad hoc fashion, the term "cyrillization" usually refers to a consistent system applied, for example, to transcribe names of German, Chinese, or English people and places for use in Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian or Bulgarian newspapers and books. Cyrillization is analogous to romanization, when words from a non-Latin script-using language are rendered in the Latin alphabet for use

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wylie transliteration</span> Method for transliterating Tibetan script

Wylie transliteration is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English-language typewriter. The system is named for the American scholar Turrell V. Wylie, who created the system and published it in a 1959 Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies article. It has subsequently become a standard transliteration scheme in Tibetan studies, especially in the United States.

The romanization of Ukrainian, or Latinization of Ukrainian, is the representation of the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, which is based on the Cyrillic script. Romanization may be employed to represent Ukrainian text or pronunciation for non-Ukrainian readers, on computer systems that cannot reproduce Cyrillic characters, or for typists who are not familiar with the Ukrainian keyboard layout. Methods of romanization include transliteration and transcription.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romanization of Hebrew</span> Transcription of Hebrew into the Latin alphabet

The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words.

Th is a digraph in the Latin script. It was originally introduced into Latin to transliterate Greek loan words. In modern languages that use the Latin alphabet, it represents a number of different sounds. It is the most common digraph in order of frequency in the English language.

The romanization of Khmer is a representation of the Khmer (Cambodian) language using letters of the Latin alphabet. This is most commonly done with Khmer proper nouns, such as names of people and geographical names, as in a gazetteer.

J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is jay, with a now-uncommon variant jy. When used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiced palatal approximant it may be called yod or jod.

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft ⟨c⟩ occurs in which ⟨c⟩ represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard ⟨c⟩ often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩, and is that of the voiceless velar stop,. The sound of a soft ⟨c⟩, typically before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩, may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft ⟨c⟩ is.

Romanisation of Bengali is the representation of written Bengali language in the Latin script. Various romanisation systems for Bengali are used, most of which do not perfectly represent Bengali pronunciation. While different standards for romanisation have been proposed for Bengali, none has been adopted with the same degree of uniformity as Japanese or Sanskrit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yo (Cyrillic)</span> Letter of the Cyrillic script

Yo, Jo or Io is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Unicode, the letter ⟨Ё⟩ is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO.

In contemporary Japanese writing, foreign-language loanwords and foreign names are normally written in the katakana script, which is one component of the Japanese writing system. As far as possible, sounds in the source language are matched to the nearest sounds in the Japanese language, and the result is transcribed using standard katakana characters, each of which represents one syllable. For example, America is written アメリカ (A-me-ri-ka). To accommodate various foreign-language sounds not present in Japanese, a system of extended katakana has also developed to augment standard katakana.

References

  1. Hayes, Bruce (2011); Introductory Phonology; John Wiley & Sons; ISBN   1444360132, 9781444360134. "The term orthographic transcription simply means that the words are written down using the customary spelling system (orthography) of the language." For a better view of the examples shown in Hayes's book see Fromkin, Victoria (2000); Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory ; Wiley-Blackwell; ISBN   0631197117, 9780631197119
  2. 1 2 thefreedictionary.com/Transcription, citing Vinogradov, V. A., in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). Retrieved March 19, 2012.