![]() Therefore, they will be transliterated differently even though the alphabet is the same. Multiple languages share the Roman alphabet, but the pronunciation of some letters will differ from language to language. Transliteration is not just dependent on phonetically matching one language’s alphabet to that of another. In English, this would be similar to the letter C sounding different for the words ‘company’ and ‘civil.’ This is because depending on the context of how the letter is used, the character on its own can have two different sounds, thus leading to different phonetic matches. Notice that the last letter in the word, は, has two possible transliterations – HA and WA. In this case, each letter from the Japanese word can be transliterated to English on its own. This conversion process is normally done by taking a letter from one alphabet and phonetically matching it to one or more characters in another alphabet.įor example, the Japanese word こんにちは will transliterate to KONNICHIWA in English. ![]() This chart shows you the complete Hebrew alphabet with transliterations.Simply put, transliteration is the process of converting a word or single character from one writing system to that of another. The English transliteration of the Hebrew word is Hanukkah or Chanukah. In another example, we look at a Hebrew word for the Festival of Lights holiday which is חנוכה. Chinese restaurants help their customers by providing a transliteration of the Simplified Chinese script into Latin letters to help you understand their menu. If Chow Mein was written in Mandarin characters (炒面) you would have no idea what those characters meant unless you were a Mandarin speaker. If you go to a Chinese restaurant in London, you often notice that their menu isn’t written in English, but you can roughly guess the meaning. ![]() Those of us who like exploring Chinese and Arabic speaking countries, should be grateful that transliteration exists! Examples of transliteration Transliterated into Latin, this word becomes Wǎnshàng hǎo which is much easier for us to pronounce. If the words ‘Good Evening’ aren’t transliterated from Simplified Chinese to Latin letters, the Simplified Chinese (晚上好)is almost impossible for anyone but a Mandarin speaker to understand. Latin letters are used in some of the most common languages spoken around the world, including English, German, French and Spanish. ![]() Transliteration converts these scripts into Latin letters but it doesn’t actually translate their meanings. Many languages, such as Russian and Bulgarian, use the Cyrillic alphabet, while Japanese uses Kanji and Hindi and Nepali use a Devanagari script. It makes a language a little more accessible to people who are unfamiliar with that language’s alphabet. Translation, put in simple terms, gives you the meaning of a word that’s written in another language.Ī transliteration doesn’t tell you the meaning of the word, but it gives you an idea of how the word is pronounced in a foreign language. However, there are some significant distinctions. Many people assume transliteration is equivalent to translation. Home ▸ Blog ▸ What’s the difference between translation and transliteration? What’s the difference between translation and transliteration?
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