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Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system to another that involves swapping letters (thus + ) in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or Latin → .
For instance, for the Greek language term , which is usually Translation as 'Greece', the usual transliteration into the Latin script (romanization) is ; and the Russian language term , which is usually translated as 'Russian Republic', can be transliterated either as or alternatively as .
Transliteration is the process of representing or intending to represent a word, phrase, or text in a different script or writing system. Transliterations are designed to convey the pronunciation of the original word in a different script, allowing readers or speakers of that script to approximate the sounds and pronunciation of the original word. Transliterations do not change the pronunciation of the word. Thus, in the Greek above example, is transliterated though it is pronounced exactly the same way as , or the Greek letters, . is transliterated though pronounced as , and is transliterated , though it is pronounced (exactly like ) and is not Vowel length.
Transcription, conversely, seeks to capture sound, but phonetically approximate it into the new script; corresponds to in the International Phonetic Alphabet. While differentiation is lost in the case of , note the allophonic realization of as a palatalized when preceding front vowels and .
Angle brackets may be used to set off transliteration, as opposed to slashes for phonemic transcription and square brackets for phonetic transcription. Angle brackets may also be used to set off characters in the original script. Conventions and author preferences vary.
Transliteration, which adapts written form altering the pronunciation when spoken out, is opposed to letter transcription, which is a letter by letter conversion of one language into another writing system. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the target script, for some specific pair of source and target language. Transliteration may be very close to letter-by-letter transcription if the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages.
For many script pairs, there are one or more standard transliteration systems. However, unsystematic transliteration is common, as for Burmese, for instance.
| Ελληνική Δημοκρατία | |||
| Ελευθερία | |||
| Ευαγγέλιο | |||
| των υιών |
Some languages and Writing system present particular difficulties to transcribers. These are discussed on separate pages. Examples of languages and writing systems and methods of transliterating include:
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