Igor . Update: October 1, 2018.
Hello dear readers of the blog site! I decided to devote this post to the topic of transliteration, which, in a nutshell, represents the rules for writing a text using characters from another language (say, in Russian in Latin).
I think that almost all users have encountered this phenomenon, and many used transliteration, conveying their thoughts in Russian, but writing them in English letters, simply not having a Russian-language keyboard layout in the visual display.
Such texts (notes or messages) written in Latin characters can still be found on some forums. Moreover, their users write, basically not observing any rules that have a place to be and which we will talk about below. The main purpose of such communication is to convey information to the audience, which would adequately perceive it.
Some used (and still use) transliteration from Russian into English when sending SMS from a mobile phone, if there is no corresponding language option. However, these are not the only examples of translit. Today we’ll talk about this.
Rules for transliteration and its difference from transcription
To begin with, we will define the basic concepts for a more accurate understanding of the subject, as well as learn the fundamental difference between such terms as “transcription” and “transliteration”.
Transcription - This is a broad concept, which means as accurate as possible the transmission of sounds of a particular language through a specific system of symbols.
Transliteration provides the display of letters of one writing with the help of signs of another writing, with no emphasis on pronunciation.
Words written with the help of special characters are extremely useful for mastering the correct pronunciation when learning foreign languages. Here are some examples of transcription of Russian words in Latin in the format of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet):
Address - ˈadrʲɪs Aleksey - ɐlʲɪksʲˈej Almanac - ɐlʲmɐnˈax Gogol - ɡˈoɡəlʲ Dmitry - dmʲˈitrʲɪj Evgeny - jɪvɡʲˈenʲɪj Yekaterinburg - jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnbˈurk Michael - mʲɪxɐˈil Dictionary - slɐvˈarʲ Tatyana - jəʲɪлиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялиялия
Most languages \u200b\u200b(including English and Russian) have their own transcription rules when each word finds its phonetic counterpart that describes its sound. Here are a couple of examples:
Smile - ulypkʌ (Russian transcription) smile - (English transcription)
Moreover, letters and words in Cyrillic can be transcribed into English, and vice versa.
The task of transliteration, as we have already determined, is to simply display the characters of one writing with the help of characters of another. Then the Russian words given above as an example (including names) will be translated by transliteration into the same English as follows:
Address - Alex Adres - Aleksej Almanac - Al "manah Gogol - Gogol" Dmitry - Dmitrij Eugene - Evgenij Ekaterinburg - Ekaterinburg Mikhail - Mihail Dictionary - Slovar "Tatyana - Tat" jana Julia - Julija Yuri - Jurij
I think now difference between transcription and transliteration in the general sense of these terms is obvious. There are many standards for transliteration, sometimes incompatible with each other. Historically, several state standards (GOST) were adopted, which, including the Soviet era, regulated transliteration.
Today, the international standard is valid. ISO-9 regulating the general principles of translation from Russian into Latin. Its main advantage is that it eliminates the ambiguity of interpretation.
In it, each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet corresponds to a specific letter of the Latin alphabet or its combination with a special symbol (diacrit). Diacritical Symbols - special superscript or subscript characters that are added to the letters.
A vivid example is the “» ”icon, which is present in some transliterated words presented above (say, Tat ana jana), which means softening of consonants (an analogue of the soft sign in the Russian alphabet). As a result of this correspondence, reverse transliteration is possible, even if the language is not recognized.
Despite the existence of the international standard ISO-9, which very unambiguously reflects the principles of translating signs of the Russian alphabet into Latin, it is not the only one, since alternative basic rules are applied in various fields.
If you are intrigued by this topic and would like to familiarize yourself with it, then a list of all the basic standards for transliterating Cyrillic languages \u200b\u200busing the Latin alphabet can be found on the special Wikipedia page.
Practical transliteration methods
After presenting the theoretical part, it's time to dwell on the types of practical use of transliteration. Here they are:
1. Practical transcription - It is based on a standard such as ISO-9, which I mentioned above. It is necessary to observe not only grammatical, but also phonetic correspondence between both languages. In other words, it is necessary to find a "middle ground" in the spelling and sounding of a word based on both languages.
The advantage of this method is its easier text input. In this case, only Latin characters are used. True, minor difficulties may arise when reading some specific consonants that have such correspondences: “w-zh”, “h-ch”, “w-sh”, “w-shch”.
It is also used when sending SMS, as well as often in the addresses of Russian-language websites and when working with software that does not support the Cyrillic alphabet. Below is a table of the most commonly used rules of transliteration of the Russian alphabet in Latin letters:
Please note that some Russian letters correspond to several variants of Latin characters at once (h, d, e, e, w, s, y, k, l, x, q, h, w, w, w, b, s, b, e, u, i). They are arranged in decreasing order of popularity.
2. Gamer language (alternative name “Volapyuk encoding”) - Latin letters are used here, together with numbers and punctuation marks. This name was received by him due to the fact that such a broadcast in progress between gamers (computer game players).
The fact is that in such games there are basically no options for using the Cyrillic alphabet in nicknames, so gamers make up a set of English characters and numbers that look like Russian letters (for example, “Cuneiform” in the gaming version looks like “KJIuHonucb”).
For the formation of Russian nicknames, this is even original, but with the aim of sending SMS, and even more so when communicating, this method is clearly not suitable. True, sometimes webmasters use some gamemasters for their website (for example, nouck.ru or kypc.ru).
3. Vulgar - The most popular transliteration option in communication between ordinary users. It is based on a mixture of transcription and gaming language. A compromise has been reached here, since such an option is quite simple to introduce and at the same time easy to read.
Let's say it uses the number “4” to denote the letter “H”. Also, instead of "F" put an asterisk "*", instead of "W" - "W", etc. In general, the usual translit allows almost any interpretation, the main thing is that the author is comfortable writing the text, and the readers can easily perceive it correctly.
Transliteration of names, surnames and addresses of sites
And now we are moving on to the practical area where the relevant standards must be strictly observed. For example, very often it is required to indicate data (name, surname, address) when registering on foreign sites, say, on the same Google Adsense () or websites of payment systems (for example, PayPal).
If you register from the territory of the Russian Federation, then strictly follow the rules applicable when applying for passports, otherwise difficulties may arise.
Therefore, the correct spelling of the Russian name, surname, address (as well as other necessary data) in English can significantly help you.
For webmasters, strict and consistent adherence to the rules of transliteration of Russian words is also crucial. Indeed, many owners of web resources on the Internet use translit both in the addresses of pages and in the name of their sites.
Why is this necessary? The fact is that the URLs containing the keywords of the web pages have a positive effect on the SEO of the site. Say this is a trifle? But the successful promotion of any project just consists of continuous nuances.
An indirect proof of this can be the fact that, for example, Yandex, when ranking (in how search engines rank sites), most recently even highlighted keywords in the urls in bold:
Thus, it is very important to comply with the correct translit from Russian to English for the addresses of all pages of your site. For this purpose, it is worth taking the table provided above as a basis.
It should also be borne in mind that when compiling a URL, it is best to limit the character set as follows: use only numbers (0-9), letters in upper (AZ) and lower (az) registers, as well as dashes ("-") and underscores ("_").
For those who have web resources, there is a simple extension (although this plugin has not been updated for a long time, so for ardent perfectionists like me there is its more modern analogue), which provides automatic translation of Russian letters in the address of the page, while creating a CNC (human-readable urls).
Regarding search engine optimization, I would like to dwell on one more nuance (I remind you that there are no trifles in the promotion). Despite the fact that the main international standard is ISO-9 at the moment, transliteration in Yandex and Google has its own characteristics.
For example, in the generally accepted standard, the Russian letter “x” (ha) corresponds to the Latin “x” (x). However, Yandex doesn’t highlight keywords with this option in the URL (only those keys with "x" transliterated in "h" should be highlighted in bold):
A similar situation is observed with Google, although in the rules of transliteration of the "empire of good" there are some differences with the Russian search engine.
Since many webmasters and owners of commercial resources are slightly more oriented towards Yandex, in the last chapter I will provide one of the online services that makes it possible to correctly translate any set of letters that corresponds to the rules of the "Runet Mirror" into transliteration.
In general, manually you can always put the right letter when compiling the url of any web page. Using the automatic option in the person of the same RusToLat, we lose some time for editing, since in the settings of this plugin it is possible to set only the ISO-9 standard as the most suitable. And in it there is just the correspondence “x” - “x”.
Of course, you can find a way out here too. Namely, to slightly modify the plugin file, where the correspondence between the Russian and Latin alphabets is defined. To do this, open it for editing (I advise you to use the Notpad ++ editor in such cases) and replace the characters you need:
Just do not forget to make sure that RusToLat is configured correctly in (ISO 9-95 encoding must be installed there):
Naturally, whether or not to perform such an operation, everyone decides for himself. By the way, I would be glad to any comment on your part regarding this aspect. Is the game worth the candle?
In order to achieve the active participation of your site in the image search, you can use translit keywords in the image file name itself. For these purposes, it is convenient to use the Punto Switcher program. After activating the software, simply select the name of the image file and press the combination Alt + Scroll Lock on the keyboard (the default hotkeys in the Switcher).
Transliteration translators online
1. First of all, I would like to immediately fulfill the promise and provide a service that takes into account the rules of Yandex (I suspect that it will also be suitable for the Google search engine). it Translit-online.ru where there are several options to choose from. On the main tab, you can translate online any text for reading up to 50,000 characters long:
Below are the settings for some characters inherent only in the Cyrillic alphabet (e, d, x, z, u, e), which cause some difficulties when converting them to the Latin alphabet. Since this is a translation mode for reading, you can configure the correspondence according to your understanding:
And here you can just use the following page of an online translator to translate the URL of your CNC website page into translit:
There is also such an interesting tool as a virtual keyboard. It allows you to type text in Russian, even if you do not have a Russian-language layout. Switching it to the English layout, you can print using Latin characters that are most consonant with Russian counterparts. True, you must first install the virtual keyboard in the "RU" mode using the "Esc" button:
For example, to obtain the word “transliteration”, after the above steps, type in English “t-r-a-n-s-l-i-t-e-r-a-c-i”, and to display the letter “I” in the text field, first press Ctrl and then “a”.
Among the useful features of this service, there is also the option of obtaining a first and last name for a passport, this option is extremely suitable for registration on important foreign resources, as I mentioned in the article above. On a separate tab, an online multilingual translator from Russian and vice versa is provided.
2. Another translator in transliteration online is a well-known resource. Translit.net (formerly Translit.ru), where its advantages. There is also a virtual keyboard right on the main page, which allows you to transliterate the text.
When working at a computer, there are times when we encounter transliteration of text, i.e. with the spelling of the words of the Russian language (Cyrillic) in Latin letters.
For example, if we find ourselves abroad or in some Internet cafe, etc., and there is no Russian keyboard layout on the computer that we want to use, then in such cases typing the Russian text is quite difficult.
In such situations, a transliterator may be of assistance (transliterated in abbreviated form - Cyrillic converter). The principle of transliteration is simple - by pressing the keys with Latin letters, we get the Cyrillic alphabet.
Or such a situation: for example, we live in Russia, speak and write in Russian, and we have an operating system with support for Russian fonts on our computer. But our friend or acquaintance lives “abroad” and there are no Russian fonts on his computer, so he cannot write to us in Russian.
He knows the Russian language, but simply cannot type the text in Russian on his computer, so he uses transliteration and writes the Russian text in Latin letters.
And usually in such cases, we can get a message that might look something like this:
Privet, Maks! Pishu tebe v translite, potomu chto u menya na komp’yutere net russkih shriftov.
If we know the Latin letters, then we can easily understand what is written in the message:
Hi, Max! How are you? I am writing to you in transliteration, because I do not have Russian fonts on my computer.
But, if a similar message written in translit, we get much more in volume, then quickly read a large text is already becoming more difficult. Therefore, in such a situation, a transliterator can also help, which will quickly translate this message into Cyrillic.
There are various online services and programs that transliterate text. Let us first pay attention to three translations of the text online, from simple to more advanced.
Translit online - to translit and from transliterate to cyrillic
If we just need to translate the text into transliteration, or we received a transliterated message and we need to translate it into Cyrillic, i.e. into Russian, then we can use, for example, a simple service:.
We translate the text into translit:
We translate the text from transliteration into Cyrillic:
It remains to select the text and, by pressing the right mouse button, select Copyfor further use of the selected text.
You can also use another service for transliterating text: translator translates online.
Here is the same as in the previous service described, only a button is added here To buffer, which corresponds to the action of selecting and copying text. And also in this service is a virtual keyboard for typing:
An even more advanced service for translating text: Translit.
This service was specially developed for Russian-speaking residents of the CIS countries who are abroad and wish to correspond in their native language. And the capabilities of this service are even greater than the previous ones.
It is not particularly necessary to describe it in detail in this article, since there is also help for use with a clear description:
Although I’d \u200b\u200blike to mention some interesting features of this service.
For example, those who own a computer can use the virtual Russified keyboard and type blindly in Russian even on computers that do not have Russian language support.
Translit Service It can also translate words into other languages \u200b\u200b(although I personally prefer to use it), search for the meaning of words in dictionaries, and several other useful functions.
There is also a mobile version of translit: http://translit.ru/classic/ for working in browsers of phones, smartphones, as well as computers on which the browser does not support JavaScript:
Program for translating from transliteration into Russian and vice versa
There are also different programs for transliterating text, but since novice users in most cases often do not have to deal with transliteration, so I will not particularly focus on programs so far.
But if someone still needs the transliterator program, then you can, for example, use the NI Transliterator program, trying to figure it out on your own (if you are asked to prepare instructions for installing and using this program, I’ll take a note).
Enter the text in Russian letters:
Translate Clear
As it will be in Latin letters:
Why translate Russian letters to the Latin alphabet?
Since Russia is not a very rich country yet and most companies cannot afford to arrange the distribution of free samples to advertise their products, at the moment most of the offers for free come from abroad.
Since the most common language is English, the order forms for free probes are often in English.
Address information and the name of the recipient in such forms must be filled out in Latin. Since the Latin letters will be understood by both our postmen and those companies that distribute freebies.
If you write in Russian, there is a risk that the organizers of the action simply do not want to spend time translating and understanding what is written there.
If you write in English, then our postmen will not understand to whom and where to deliver.
The best option is to write the delivery address of the freebie and the name of the recipient of the freebie in Latin.
Now the Internet is full of different translators, but most of them are either not convenient, or they need to be searched for a long time.
We offer to use constantly our free translator of Russian text into Latin.
When you order a freebie through forms written in English, then write the delivery address and name in Latin.
Our free, simple and convenient service will translate Russian text into Latin letters. When we order samples from foreign sites, we always do this for free, not always of course :-), but comes. So the method is correct.
On the brag, people often ask how to spell the address on, and in other foreign online stores. Therefore, we decided to help and did a little service. You enter your address in Russian, and the service transliterates for you. You just have to check the resulting address and copy it to the appropriate fields in the store.
Data is not saved anywhere. Questions and suggestions - write in the comments. I want to say thanks - LIKE!
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How to write an address in foreign stores
In principle, for any store, sending the parcel is enough to indicate the country of the recipient and the index. Because this data is enough for the parcel to reach our customs. Therefore, in a private correspondence, you can specify the address of the country in English and the index in numbers, and the address of the recipient (city, street, etc.) in Russian. Our mail is even more convenient. After all, the postman is more comfortable reading the address in Russian than disassembling the transliteration curve.
However, this will not work with shops. In most cases, they cannot print the address in Cyrillic. On their computer, there simply may not be an appropriate encoding, and they simply see the address written in Cyrillic as a crook. Therefore, you have to translate the address. In this case, it is not necessary to write the address in accordance with foreign rules. No need to write all sorts of street, apartment, P.O.Box, etc. At the post office, such an address may not be understood. Write your address as usual, but in Latin letters.
If you have a foreign passport, then the names of streets, cities or regions are always best written as written there.
Our service does nothing special. It just helps you translate your address, that is, write Russian letters in English. That's all.
Attention! Before sending the address, be sure to check it. We do not bear any responsibility for errors in the address (although we try to avoid them).
On-line service: transliteration of text - spelling of Russian characters in Latin letters.
About transliteration of Russian names and surnames
When filling out registration forms, questionnaires, processing various kinds of documents (for example, a passport or visa), you have to write your surname, name, address in Latin (English) letters. This service allows automate translation ( transliteration) russians letters in english.
How to write the last name and first name in English? How to name a Russian site in English letters? There are various systems or rules for transliterating names and surnames (transliteration of Russian words). They are based on the process of simply replacing the letters of the Russian alphabet with the corresponding letters or combinations of letters of the English alphabet (see below). The difference between the transliteration systems of names and surnames is observed when translating certain letters, for example E, E, b, b and diphthongs (combinations of a vowel and Y).
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In order to translate english letters at russians Paste the text in the upper input field and click the "Make" button. As a result, a translation of the Russian text into a transcript (Russian words in English letters) will be obtained in the lower input field.
Note. Since March 16, 2010, when applying for a passport, the new Cyrillic transliteration rules for the Russian alphabet have been used. The result may not coincide with the old name, for example, on a plastic card. In order for the name to be entered in the passport correctly (as before), that is, so that it matches the name on the credit card or driver’s license, you must additionally submit an appropriate application. Example: Julia according to the new system will be Iuliia, most likely you will want Julia or Yuliya (which, in my opinion, is more harmonious).
When applying for a driver’s license, a transliteration system other than a passport similar to the system for a US visa is used. At the request of the owner of the Latin alphabet in the driver’s license,
