Arabic-L:GEN:Capitalization in Transliteration

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 25 Aug 2006
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Capitalization in Transliteration

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1)
Date: 25 Aug 2006
From:Dan Parvaz <dparvaz at mac.com>
Subject:Capitalization in Transliteration

The problem of course is that any transliteration system that does  
not rely on extensive use of diacritics is at best an uneasy  
compromise between orthography and pronunciation. The Arabic definite  
article is prominently used in proper names, and dropping it is not  
an option (I think anyone would look askance at a certain newspaper  
named "Ahram", for instance). The "A" in the English transliteration  
of the article simply reflects the presence of an alif, and no more  
takes away from the hamzat-ul-wasl in Arabic than the "l" in the  
article takes away from the fact that before "sun letters" it  
undergoes total assimilation (as in "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat"). The  
capitalization is due to the fact that the article is part and parcel  
of the proper name.

The real key is to be as consistent as possible.

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End of Arabic-L:  25 Aug 2006