Transliteration

Transliteration FAQ

What is transliteration?

Transliteration is the conversion of one language's script into another language's script.

Let's take this Chinese word as an example: 你好, if we translate this into English, we get: Hello.

Translation

你好 Hello

If we instead transliterate the same Chinese word into Latin script, we get Nǐ hǎo

Transliteration

你好 Nǐ hǎo

So the script has changed, but the language has not. A Chinese speaker reading the Chinese text would say aloud the same thing someone reading the Latin script would say.

Transliteration is sometimes also called Romanization, though Romanization is specifically conversion from a non Latin/Roman alphabet into the Latin/Roman alphabet. Transliteration is more broad and can cover script conversions of all kinds.

What are some usecases for transliteration?

Transliteration is not a replacement for translation. Instead, it serves a completely different function.

Some common usecases are:

• You're learning a language that's written in a script that's different from your native language.
• You want to be able to say something in a way that will be understood by speakers of that language.
• For example if you're at a restaurant in Japan, translating 'beef' into Japanese(牛肉) and showing it to the waiter is a lot less personable that saying 'Gyūniku' yourself.
• Signs/maps/directions/etc. If you see a sign that says 'Narita Airport', the 'Airport' part is a translation, but 'Narita' is a transliteration of the Japanese text '成(NARU)田(TA)' or 'Narita'.