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<title>The Nostradamus page on the transliteration, transcription or
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<h1>Transliteration</h1>
<p>This page is about the transliteration, transcription or Romanization of
Hebrew -- the rendering of Hebrew words in the Latin alphabet.</p>
<p>[Note: In some circles, "transliteration" means to render a language's
native orthography in some other symbols. Here, that would mean to use Latin
letters in a one-to-one correspondence with the original Hebrew spellings,
such that you could perfectly convert back to the original if needed. On this
page, we generally take transliteration to mean a Romanized phonetic
transcription.]</p>
<hr>
<p>All transliteration schemes involve compromises. There are six issues to
consider and one law.</p>
<ol>
<li><b>The Hebrew pronunciation</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>If your goal is a phonetic transliteration, you first have to decide how you think the Hebrew is pronounced. Ashkenazic,
Sephardic, Galitzianer. Israeli sephardic vs. Yemenite sephardic. If Yemenite,
which dialect? Ancient Hebrew or Modern Hebrew? [See the "Pronunciation"
article in the Jewish Encyclopedia. The onlne version appears to be down
1-3-06.)</p>
<p>Do you think the ayin is pronounced or silent? Should the kof be
distinguished from the kaf? Are the samech, sin, and sav three different
sounds? Two? Or one? Is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet pronounced /v/ or /w/? </p>
<p>Israelis sound their segol much like the tseirei, but American speakers of
Israeli-style Hebrew distinguish them. Which will you use?</p>
<p>And goodness only knows how we plan to pronounce the Aramaic, the Old
French loan words, and the proper names from neighboring cultures.</p>
</blockquote>
<ol start="2">
<li><b>Assumptions about how people spell and pronounce English</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Romanization would be easier if only we could agree on how to spell things
in English. Do we render a long A as <ei> (freight) or <ay> (hay)? </p>
<p>You also have to watch out for ambiguities in your transliteration. You
might represent a shin with a segol as <she>, but would the reader pronounce
it as /shee/? Maybe <sheh> would make it clearer. </p>
<p>While English pronunciation has a variety of national and regional dialects,
most transliterators presume that they pronounce English in a standard way.
Even if that were true, many of the readers who use their transliteration
system don't. The <a href="http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxhowtor.html">alt.usage.english
FAQ</a> says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><font size="2">Beware of using ad hoc methods to indicate pronunciation. The
problem with ad hoc methods is that they often wrongly assume your dialect to have certain features in common with the readers'
dialect. You may pronounce "bother" to rhyme with "father"; some of the readers here don't. You may pronounce "cot" and "caught" alike;
some of the readers here don't. You may pronounce "caught" and "court" alike; some of the readers here don't.</font> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, we wouldn't have this problem if everyone pronounced English the
way I do. </p>
<p>One could avoid the difficulties of English pronunciation entirely, by
using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which has a distinct symbol for virtually every sound
possible in human speech -- but normal people wouldn't know how to pronounce any
of the symbols. </p>
</blockquote>
<ol start="3">
<li><b>Representing sounds that don't exist in English</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Such as the voiceless velar fricative. An <x> would be great because Greek
uses the X for the same sound and there's no other Hebrew sound that
corresponds to the Latin X. But only the IPA uses an <x>. Others use a
<ch>
(Chanukah), or <h> (Hanukah). The Conservative Movement uses an academic
convention that distinguishes the chet (<h> with a dot under it), from the chaf
(<kh>). </p>
<p>On the other hand, English does have the schwa (sheva na) sound -- it's the <o> in
lemon -- but no standard way of writing it. The
dictionary uses an inverted e to represent it. In Hebrew transliteration, I've
seen an apostrophe, a lower case <e> or a superscripted <e> used. </p>
</blockquote>
<ol start="4">
<li><b>Correspondence to original spelling</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you want your transcription to preserve the distinction between kof and
kaf, tav and tet, etc? Do you want to indicate a dagesh forte (dagesh chazak)?
It's important if your readers will be discussing the triconsonantal roots of the
Hebrew words or other matters of grammar.</p>
<p>Scholars need perfect correspondence in their transliterations, so the
system found in the <i>SBL Handbook of Style</i> (published by the Society of Biblical Literature)
is generally used. Of course, non-scholars
can't read it at all.</p>
</blockquote>
<ol start="5">
<li><b>Common spellings</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Let's say the system you've settled on doesn't indicate the dagesh forte by
doubling. You lay out the cover of your new book and it says "Shabat for
Today." You show it to your publisher . . . or client . . . or wife. And
they say "It's spelled wrong!" Now you have to decide how to handle
"common" spellings such as Shabbat, Maariv, Kabbalah, Leah.</p>
<p>One way out is to use the familiar spellings when in an "English"
context such as a book title, headings or English text; and use the
transliterated form when rendering a Hebrew passage phonetically. This can get
funky if you write a passage about the matriarch Leah and the reader tries to
find the word in your transliteration where you've rendered it as
<Lei-ah>.</p>
</blockquote>
<ol start="6">
<li><b>Are you prepared to use special characters?</b></li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>The IPA and the SBL systems (for phonology and orthography wonks,
respectively) depend on specialized characters. These are difficult for the
layperson to learn, provoke much unhappiness for your typographer, and are
problematic for websites and email.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Latin alphabet -- here let's extend that to mean the
ASCII character set -- can be easily typeset, browsed on the web or emailed.</p>
<p>Those who want total correspondence to the Hebrew spelling in their ASCII
email, can use the<b> </b>Michigan-Claremont-Westminster (MCW) scheme. However, it
takes time to learn and doesn't help with pronunciation.</p>
<p>Those who want total clarity of pronunciation in email could use X-SAMPA, a
7-bit ASCII representation of the IPA character set.</p>
<p>But whatever compromises you make, you'll sacrifice ease-of-use or
precision . . . or both. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><b>The One Immutable Law of Transliteration: </b>No matter what system you
adopt, someone will come up to you and say, "I showed your transliteration
to six different people and not one of them could pronounce it correctly. Here's
a much better system that I've developed."</p>
<hr>
<h4><b>Sample transliteration schemes:</b></h4>
<blockquote>
<h5>Reform</h5>
<p><a href="http://urj.org/downloadfile.cfm?file=99B77B43-F17C-299A-8E4F574DDC4BD809">URJ
[formerly UAHC]
Transliteration Guidelines and Master Word List, prepared by Debra Hirsch Corman
and Rabbi Hara Person,
<st1:date Year="2002" Day="15" Month="1">
February 4, 2005</a>. Replaces the Jan. 15, 2002 document and the Feb. 15, 2005 Supplement. </p>
<p><a href="files/hayon.pdf">Guidelines for Contributors to the <i> Journal of
Reform Judaism,</i> prepared by Dr. Yehiel Hayon, January 1981</a></p>
<p><a href="files/uahc1977.pdf">Guide to Hebrew Transliteration According to
Israeli Pronunciation, edited by Werner Weinberg, published by the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations, 1977</a></p>
<h5>Conservative</h5>
<p> <a href="files/xlit1.pdf"><i> Siddur Sim Shalom,</i> 1997</a></p>
<h5>Other</h5>
<p><a href="translit-hoffman.htm">Dr. Joel M. Hoffman, 1997</a></p>
<p><a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/hebrew.pdf">Library of
Congress</a></p>
<p><i><a href="http://www.cjs.upenn.edu/JQR/style.htm">Jewish Quarterly Review</a></i></p>
<p>ASCII system used by <i><a href="http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/TC-translit.html">Textual
Criticism</a></i></p>
<p><i><a href="http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/systems.jsp">Jewish
Encyclopedia</a></i></p>
</blockquote>
<h4><b>References:</b></h4>
<ul>
<p>ALA/LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts.
Compiled and edited by Randall K. Barry. Washington, DC: Library of Congress,
1991. This is the system that the <i>Chicago Manual</i> refers to.</p>
<p>Hebraica Cataloging:
A Guide to ALA/LC Romanization and Descriptive Cataloging. 1987. Paul
Maher, prep.; Library of Congress. Paper (72 p.). ISBN 0-8444-0567-1. <a href="http://lcweb.loc.gov/cds/">Available
from LC CDS.</a> $15.00. Or see the <a href="http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/hebraicateam/Hebraica%20Cataloging/">online
version</a>.</p>
<p>ISO 259:1984. Documentation--Transliteration
of Hebrew characters into Latin characters. ISO Technical Committee 46.
Paper (8 p.). <a href="http://www.ansi.org/">Available from ANSI.</a> $28.00.
Also published in ISO Standards Handbook 1: Documentation and Information
3rd ed. (Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, 1988), 368-375.</p>
<p>ANSI Z39.25-1975. Romanization
of Hebrew. NISO. Paper (15 p.). ISBN 0-88738-977-5. Out of print, but
versions can be found on the Web.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/english.html">Academy of the
Hebrew Language</a> published <i>Rules of Transcription: Romanization of Hebrew
</i>in 1957. I'm told that these are used in Israel for road signs and maps as
well as in most maps of Israel published abroad. Furthermore, they have been
adopted by the UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names and
have become the standard for the transliteration of Israeli geographical
names.</p>
</ul>
<h4><b>Articles on the Web:</b></h4>
<ul>
<li> Helen Kennedy on the spelling of <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/378626p-321430c.html">Chanukah</a>
(<i>New York Daily News</i> 12-29-05). </li>
<li> Cecil Adams on the spelling of <a href="http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_264b.html">Muammar
Khadafy</a>. </li>
<li> The <i>Forward</i> article on the use of the <a href="http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.11.15/arts5.html">apostrophe
in Hebrew transliteration</a>.</li>
<li>Rabbi Howard Jachter has written <a href="http://koltorah.org/ravj/Transliterating%20English%20Names%20for%20Ketubot.htm">an
interesting article</a> on the transliteration of English names into Hebrew.</li>
</ul>
<h4><b>Software and electronic texts:</b></h4>
<blockquote>
<p>We haven't tried it, but <a href="http://www.hebrewworks.com/Transliteration.htm">Saffa</a>
claims to be able to automatically transliterate any Hebrew text. Also,
Linguist's Software, a pioneer in Hebrew fonts for personal computers, offers a <a href="http://www.linguistsoftware.com/stu.htm"> Semitic Transliterator�</a> in Unicode
that they say can transliterate Hebrew according to any of the following
transliteration methods: Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), Lambdin [Thomas O.
Lambdin?], Blau [Joshua Blau?], Greenberg [Dr. Gillian Greenberg?], Harrison [Roland Kenneth Harrison?], Kautsch & Cowley
[Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, edited by Emil Kautzsch and A. E. Cowley?], LaSor [William Sanford
LaSor?], TWOT
[Theological Word Book of the Old Testament?], TDOT [Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament?], Marks &
Rogers [John H. Marks and Virgil M. Rogers?], and [Jacob] Weingreen.</p>
<p>A transliterated siddur can be licensed from <a href="http://home.comcast.net/~judaism/Siddur/">Jordan
Lee Wagner</a>. </p>
<p>You can type short bits of Hebrew using an English keyboard at the <a href="http://www.amhaaretz.org/translit/">Am
ha-Aretz website</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 align="center">Some
Final Thoughts</h3>
<p>We've been confronting the difficulties of transliteration ever since we got
involved in the production of Jewish books in the mid-1980's. Then, in about
2003, <i>Tikkun Magazine </i>called and asked for our help
with their new house style sheet. This caused us to really think through some of
the issues surrounding transliteration. Finally, we wrote it all up and put it
on the Web on July 7, 2004.</p>
<p>Because of our work on many Jewish prayerbooks, we have
focused on human-readable transliterations. Those interested in machine-readable
encoding could look into Unicode, RFC 1555, and the
Michigan Code Manual RMUM82-1.</p>
<p>Our friend Bill Wollheim suggests that someone ought to undertake scholarly research
into the transliteration preferences of the various Jewish movements and
see whether there is a connection to their respective ideologies.</p>
<p>Rabbi Kim S. Geringer suggests that the stressed syllables be set in <b>bold
type</b>, but I prefer the simple accent used in Joe
Rosenstein's siddur [http://newsiddur.org/ link broken 1-3-06].</p>
<p>Interestingly, wiktionary.org uses both IPA <i>and</i> SAMPA to represent the
pronunciation of English words.</p>
<p>Thanks to our friend, Dr. Ernest Rubinstein, for his helpful suggestions, and
to Oren Tirosh for the information about <i>Rules of Transcription: Romanization of Hebrew.
</i></p>
<p>There are two systems of romanizing Japanese: Hepburn, which is easier for
English speakers to pronounce; and Kunrei-shiki, which gives a better indication
of the morphology.</p>
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