Arabic transliteration

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Marion Marmotte

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Dec 15, 2021, 11:04:48 AM12/15/21
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Dear All,

Could you please tell me what transliteration system you use for Arabic?
Is there one that is widely accepted?

Thank you in advance,
Marion

Sarah Irving

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Dec 15, 2021, 11:30:30 AM12/15/21
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Marion Marmotte

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Dec 15, 2021, 11:48:00 AM12/15/21
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Thank you very much, dear Sarah.

Best wishes,
Marion

Slavomír Čéplö

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Dec 15, 2021, 12:16:50 PM12/15/21
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Dear Marion,

coming from a different tradition (European and dialectology), a lot
of us prefer the ZDMG system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_31635/.

On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 5:04 PM 'Marion Marmotte' via North American
Society for Christian Arabic Studies <nas...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>

Yusuf Gürsey

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Dec 15, 2021, 12:58:48 PM12/15/21
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Strictly speaking, no. Nothing like Pinyin or formerly Wade-Giles for Chinese. One should look for the journal or the publisher guidelines for details. For modern Arabic personal names, it is basically a toss up. For scholarly work on Classical Arabic the basic three vowel system a, u, i with length indicated by a macron ā,ū, ī is used, some indicate alif maqsura by ä, others don't distinguish it from ā . Hamza is indicated ' or ʾ , some may use IPA ʔ , but usually only in linguistics. Emphatics are usually indicated by a subscript dot. ظ is by convention indicated by ẓ although in Classical Arabic, and in recitations of Modern Standard Arabic it is IPA δˁ (zˁ is usually tolerated for profane media recitation in Egypt). خ is usually indicated ḫ or kh (or kh underlined) or χ (usually linguistic), ح usually by ḥ , sometimes ħ (IPA). ث is indicated th (or th underlined) or θ (usually linguistic) or ṯ or ŧ  . ذ  is indicated by dh (or dh underlined) or δ (usually linguistic) or đ or ḏ. ق is usually indicated by q but sometimes by ḳ .ض is indicated by ḍ but in linguistic works dealing with older Classical Arabic d̮ may be used. Usual practice is to ignore case and stick to pausal forms except if the subject matter requires it such as ln linguistics, Classical poetry, Quran, Hadith etc. ة may be left blank -h (in the modern context ـاة may be āh or āt depending on the dialect of the country taht influences media recitation) but in construct -t may be used, there is even UNICODE ẗ . Assimilation of  Sun Letters is usually ignored, The definite article is usually invariant al-  . There are various strategies for dealing with ـُوّ and ـِيّ . The letter ج may be j or ǧ or dj (or dj underlined) . Indication of hamza is left out it if is Hamzatulwaṣl . Initial hamza may be ignored. Usually it is easy to recognize the underlying Standard Arabic, but the only firm rule for details is CONSULT PUBLISHER GUIDELINES.


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Yusuf Gürsey

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Dec 15, 2021, 1:22:19 PM12/15/21
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This was for Classical Arabic, slightly different strategies ar employed for Persian, Urdu, Ottoman Turkish and other languages, Modern Arabic geographical and personal names, modern dialects etc.

Carlson, Thomas Andrew

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Dec 15, 2021, 2:07:01 PM12/15/21
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Dear Dr. Marmotte,

I think some of us prefer the Encyclopaedia of Islam (2 or 3) transliteration scheme for Arabic.  In my opinion, EI3 has several improvements over EI2.

Best wishes,
Thomas
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Marion Marmotte

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Dec 15, 2021, 4:52:03 PM12/15/21
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Dear All,

Thank you so much for your very useful comments.

Best wishes,
Marion

Marion Marmotte

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Dec 15, 2021, 4:58:01 PM12/15/21
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One more question, do you use a line for al-ab or al-walad or is it better to write them separately?

Marion

Yusuf Gürsey

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Dec 15, 2021, 7:11:28 PM12/15/21
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Most systems write the article separated by a hyphen.. 

Here is the romanization system of the UN, which differs in some respects from that of most scholarly publications:

 

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