Arabic-L:LING:Romanization Responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

Arabic-L: Tue26 Feb 2002
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Romanization Responses
2) Subject:Romanization Responses

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1)
Date:  26 Feb 2002
From:Benjamin Drury Huyck <bdh29 at email.byu.edu>
Subject:Romanization Responses

Antonio,

What do you mean by 'systems'? Do you mean methods used by people to
transliterate Arabic names? Or do you mean computer software designed to
automate the romanization of say, a database of Arabic names?

As for the first possibility, here are the names of some standards for
romanizing Arabic into Latin characters:
-UN 1972 (II/8) (United Nations)
-BGN/PCGN 1956 ("U.S. Board on Geographic Names" and "Permanent
Committee on
Geographic Names")
-I.G.N. System 1973
-ISO
233:1984
	http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=4117
-ISO
233-2:1993
	http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=4118

I know very little about these schemes, but I included the urls to the
ISO web
site for the last two. What I do know is that Arabic names can be
romanized into
a number of languages, each resulting in a different spelling. This,
compounded
with the dialectic and pronunciation differences across the Arab world,
makes an
organized, systematic approach to romanization a difficult task, to say
the
least.

As for the second possibility, I don't know of any existing software that
automates the romanization of Arabic names, although my company is
considering
developing such a product. You can contact me off the list for more
information.

Best Regards,

Benjamin Huyck

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2)
Date:  26 Feb 2002
From:Jackie Murgida <jmurg at star.net>
Subject:Romanization Responses

This topic is very complicated. A Ph.D. dissertation on Arabic names by
Paul
Roochnik at Georgetown University should be helpful. The date is the
1993.
He includes a discussion of romanization issues.

Best regards,
Jackie Murgida

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