What is Arabic Transliteration?

Arabic alphabet
ﺍ     ﺍ     ﺏ     ﺕ     ﺙ     ﺝ
ﺡ     ﺥ     ﺩ     ﺫ     ﺭ     ﺭ
?     ﺵ     ﺹ     ﺽ     ﻁ     ﻅ
ﻉ     ﻍ     ﻑ     ﻕ     ﻙ
ﻝ     ﻡ     ﻥ     ه‍     ﻭ
History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ﻱ Numerals · Numeration  •  • [ e]

Different approaches and methods for romanizing Arabic exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and spoken Arabic in the Latin alphabet; they also use different symbols for Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European languages.

Romanization Issues

Any transliteration system has to make a number of decisions, dependent on its intended field of application. One basic problem is that written Arabic is normally unvocalized, i.e. many of the vowels are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. But unvocalized Arabic writing does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. An exact equivalent of e.g. صدام حسين would be ṣdʾm ḥsyn, which is meaningless to an untrained reader. The "full transliteration" adds information not in the text, which has to be supplied by a speaker of Arabic, ṣaddām ḥusayn. Usually, newspapers and popular books use not a transliteration, but a transcription: instead of transliterating each written letter they try to reproduce the sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language: Saddam Hussein.

Most issues around the romanization of Arabic are about transliterating vs. transcribing – others, about what should be romanized:

• transliteration ignores assimilation (sandhi) of the article before the "sun letters," and may be easily misread by non-Arabs. For instance an-nur (or an-nuur, or an-noor) would be more correctly transliterated along the lines of alnur. In the transcription an-nur, a hyphen is added and the unpronounced 'l' removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arab reader, who would otherwise pronounce an 'l', probably not understand the word to be nur, pronounce only one 'n', and be confused by the role of the double 'n'. Alternatively, if the shadda is not transliterated (since it is strictly not a letter), a hypercorrect transliteration would be alnur, which presents similar problems for the uninformed non-Arab reader.
• a transliteration must render the "tied tā" (ta marbouta ة) faithfully, a transcription must render the sound ("a" like any other "a" or "t" like any other "at" — or in a vocalized text nothing vs. t)
• ISO 233 has a unique symbol, ẗ, ISO/R 233 uses superscript ^h, ^t.
• "broken alif" (alif maqṣura, ى) must be transliterated with a special symbol, but is transcribed like standing alif, when it stands for a long a (ā)
• Nunation: what is true elsewhere is also true for nunation: transliteration renders what you see, transcription what you hear.

A transcription may reflect the language as spoken, for example, by the people of Baghdad, or the official standard as spoken by a preacher in the mosque or a TV news reader. A transcription is free to add phonological (such as vowels) or morphological (such as word boundaries) information. Transcriptions will also vary depending on the writing conventions of the target language; compare English Omar Khayyam with German Omar Chajjam, both for عمر خيام (unvocalized ʿmr ḫyʾm, vocalized ʿumar ḫayyām).

A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine must be able to translate it into Arabic and back. A transliteration may be criticized as flawed for any of the following reasons:

• A "loose" transliteration is ambiguous, rendering several Arabic phonemes with an identical transliteration, or digraphs for a single phoneme (such as sh) may be confused with two adjacent phonemes;
• Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ` and ' or ʿ and ʾ for ayin and hamza);
• ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes are easy to type but may be considered unaesthetic.

A fully accurate transcription may not be necessary for native Arabic speakers as they would be able to pronounce names and sentences correctly anyway, but it can be very useful for those not fully familiar with spoken Arabic and who are familiar with the Roman alphabet. An accurate transliteration serves as a valuable stepping stone for learning, pronouncing correctly, and distinguishing phonemes. It is a useful tool for anyone familiar with the sounds of Arabic but who are not fully conversant in the language.

One criticism is that a fully accurate system would require special learning that most do not have to actually pronounce names correctly, and that with a lack of a universal Romanization system they will not be pronounced correctly by non-native speakers anyway. The precision will be lost if special characters are not replicated and if someone is not familiar with Arabic pronunciation.

Transliteration standards

• Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (1936): Adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome. It is the basis for the very influential Hans Wehr dictionary (ISBN 0-87950-003-4). http://www.dmg-web.de/
• ISO/R 233 (1961). Replaced by ISO 233 in 1984 but still encountered.
• BS 4280 (1968): Developed by the British Standards Institute. http://www.bsi-global.com/index.xalter
• SATTS (1970s): One-to-one mapping to Latin Morse equivalents; used by US military.
• UNGEGN (1972): http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/rom1_ar.pdf
• DIN-31635 (1982): Developed by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization).
• ISO 233 (1984).
• Qalam (1985): A system that focuses upon preserving the spelling, rather than the pronunciation, and uses mixed case. http://eserver.org/langs/qalam.txt
• ISO 233-2(1993). Simplified transliteration.
• Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s): Developed at Xerox by Tim Buckwalter http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm; doesn't require unusual diacritics. http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/arabic/info/buckwalter-about.html
• ALA-LC (1997). http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/arabic.pdf
• SAS: Spanish Arabists School (José Antonio Conde and others, early 19th century onwards). http://www.sumadrid.es/ariza/alandalus/Transli.htm

A table comparing romanizations using DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopaedia of Islam systems is available here: [1].

Comparison table

Letter	Name	SATTS	UNGEGN	ALA-LC	DIN	ISO	ISO/R	Qalam	SAS	SM	IPA
ﺀ	hamza	E	ʼ, —	—, ’	ʾ	ˈ, ˌ	—, ’	'	ʾ	'	/ʔ/
ﺍ	ʼalif	A			ā	ʾ	ā	aa	a, i, u; ā	aa	/a(ː)/
ﺏ	bāʼ	B	b		b			b	b	b	/b/
ﺕ	tāʼ	T	t		t			t	t	t	/t/
ﺙ	ṯāʼ	C	th		ṯ			th	ṯ	ç	/θ/
ﺝ	ǧīm, jīm, gīm	J	j		ǧ			j	ŷ	j	/ʤ/ / /g/
ﺡ	ḥāʼ	H	ḩ	ḥ	ḥ			H	ḥ	ḥ	/ħ/
ﺥ	ḫāʼ	O	kh		ḫ	ẖ		kh	j	x	/x/
ﺩ	dāl	D	d		d			d	d	d	/d/
ﺫ	ḏāl	Z	dh		ḏ			dh	ḏ	d	/g/
ﺭ	rāʼ	R	r		r			r	r	r	/r/
ﺯ	zāy	;	z		z			z	z	z	/z/
ﺱ	sīn	S	s		s			s	s	s	/s/
ﺵ	šīn	:	sh		š			sh	š	š	/ʃ/
ﺹ	ṣād	X	ş	ṣ	ṣ			S	ṣ	ṣ	/sˁ/
ﺽ	ḍād	V	ḑ	ḍ	ḍ			D	ḍ	ḍ	/dˁ/
ﻁ	ṭāʼ	U	ţ	ṭ	ṭ			T	ṭ	ṭ	/tˁ/
ﻅ	ẓāʼ	Y	z̧	ẓ	ẓ			Z	ẓ	đ?	/zˁ/
ﻉ	ʻayn	`	ʻ		ʿ			`	ʿ	r	/ʕ/
ﻍ	ġayn	G	gh		ġ		ḡ	gh	g	g	/ɣ/
ﻑ	fāʼ	F	f		f			f	f	f	/f/
ﻕ	qāf	Q	q		q			q	q	q	/q/
ﻙ	kāf	K	k		k			k	k	k	/k/
ﻝ	lām	L	l		l			l	l	l	/l/
ﻡ	mīm	M	m		m			m	m	m	/m/
ﻥ	nūn	N	n		n			n	n	n	/n/
ﻩ	hāʼ	~	h		h			h	h	h	/h/
ﻭ	wāw	W	w		w			w	w; ū	w; o	/w/, /uː/
ﻱ	yāʼ	I	y		y			y	y; ī	y; e	/j/, /iː/
ﺁ	ʼalif mamdūda	AEA	ā	ā, ʼā	ʾā	ʾâ	ā, ʾā		ā	'aa	/ʔaː/
ﺓ	tāʼ marbūṭa	@	h, t		h, t	ẗ	h, t	h, t	t; —	t	/a/, /at/
ﻯ	ʼalif maqṣūra	/	y		ā	ỳ		ae	à	à	/aː/
ﻻ	lām ʼalif	LA	lā		lā	laʾ	lā	la	lʾ; lā	laa	/lː/
ال	ʼalif lām	AL	al-		al-	ʾˈal	al-	al	al-	al-; ál-	var.

Online

Main article: Arabic Chat Alphabet

Online communication is sometimes restricted to an ASCII environment in which not only the Arabic letters themselves but also Roman characters with diacritics are unavailable. Even when Arabic letters and Roman characters with diacritics are available, they are often difficult to type. This problem is faced by most speakers of languages that use non-Roman alphabets, or heavily modified ones. An ad hoc solution consists of using Arabic numerals which mirror or resemble the relevant Arabic.

See also

• Arabic language
• Arabic alphabet
• Arabic grammar
• Arabic names
• Romanization
• Arabic Chat Alphabet
• Transliteration

External links

• [http://www.dhu-yazan.com/ Online en > ar transliteration tool in Arabic] & English interfaces.
• SATTS: Roman-to-Arabic mappings
• Omniglot: Arabic alphabet, pronunciation and language
• J'raxis·Com: The Arabic Script
• Table comparing Romanization systems
• Learn the Arabic Script Online