Orthographic Transcription
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Orthographic transcription is a
transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
method that employs the standard spelling system of each target language.Hayes, Bruce (2011)
Introductory Phonology
John Wiley & Sons; , 9781444360134. "The term orthographic transcription simply means that the words are written down using the customary spelling system (orthography) of the language." For a better view of the examples shown in Hayes's book see Fromkin, Victoria (2000)
''Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory
'; Wiley-Blackwell; , 9780631197119
thefreedictionary.com/Transcription
citing Vinogradov, V. A., in ''The Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (1979). Retrieved March 19, 2012.
Examples of orthographic transcription are "Pushkin" and "Pouchkine", respectively the English and French orthographic transcriptions of the surname "Пу́шкин" in the name Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин (
Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...
). Thus, each target language (English and French) transcribes the surname according to its own orthography. Contrast with
phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
,
phonemic orthography A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...
,
transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
, and
translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...
.


Distinction from transliteration

Transcription as a mapping from sound to script must be distinguished from transliteration, which creates a mapping from one script to another that is designed to match the original script as directly as possible. Standard transcription schemes for linguistic purposes include the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA), and its ASCII equivalent,
SAMPA __NOTOC__ The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It was originally developed in the late 1980s for ...
. Transcription is often confused with transliteration, perhaps due to a common journalistic practice of mixing elements of both in rendering foreign names. The resulting practical transcription is a hybrid that is called both "transcription" and "transliteration" by the general public. While transliteration only occurs when different scripts are concerned, transcription may very well be used for different languages using the same script. For example, the name of Bulgarian city Търговище is rendered as Тырговиште in Russian, because the letters ъ and щ in Russian have a different function than in Bulgarian. Likewise, some languages using the Latin script use orthographic transcription for all foreign names: ''George Walker Bush'' is written ''Džordžs Volkers Bušs'' in Latvian (the ending ''-s'' marks the nominative case of masculine names, see
Latvian declension In the Latvian language, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals are inflected in six declensions. There are seven cases: * nominative (nominatīvs) * genitive (ģenitīvs) * dative (datīvs) * accusative (akuzatīvs) * instrumental (instrumen ...
) and ''Corc Volker Buş'' in Azerbaijani. The table below shows examples of phonetic transcription of the name of the former Russian president known in English as Boris Yeltsin, followed by accepted hybrid forms in various languages. English speakers will pronounce "Boris" differently from the original Russian, so it is a transliteration rather than a transcription in the strict sense. The same words are likely to be transcribed differently under different systems. For example, the
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
name for the capital of the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
is ''Beijing'' using the commonly used contemporary system
Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
, but in the historically significant
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles () is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's '' Chinese–English Dictionary'' of ...
system, it is written ''Pei-Ching''. Practical transcription can be done into a non-alphabetic language too. For example, in a Hong Kong newspaper,
George Bush George Bush most commonly refers to: * George H. W. Bush (1924–2018), 41st president of the United States and father of the 43rd president * George W. Bush (born 1946), 43rd president of the United States and son of the 41st president Georg ...
's name is transliterated into two
Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
s that sound like "Bou-sū" (布殊) by using the characters that mean "cloth" and "special". Similarly, many words from English and other Western European languages are borrowed in Japanese and are transcribed using
Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
, one of the Japanese
syllabaries In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
.


Subsequent divergence

After transcribing a word from one language to the script of another language: * one or both languages may develop further. The original correspondence between the sounds of the two languages may change, and so the pronunciation of the transcribed word develops in a different direction from the original pronunciation. * the transcribed word may be adopted as a
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
in another language with the same script. This often leads to a pronunciation and spelling which are different from a direct transcription. This is especially evident for Greek loanwords and proper names. Greek words were historically first transcribed to Latin (according to their old pronunciations), and then loaned into other languages, and finally the loanword has developed according to the rules of the target language. For example, ''Aristotle'' is the currently used English form of the name of the philosopher whose name in Greek is spelled  ̓Aριστoτέλης (''Aristotélēs''), which was transcribed to Latin ''Aristoteles'', from where it was loaned into other languages and followed their linguistic development. (In "classical" Greek of Aristotle's time, lower-case letters were not used, and the name was spelled ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΗΣ.) ''Pliocene'', a much more recent word, comes from the Greek words πλείων (''pleiôn'', "more") and καινóς (''kainós'', "new"), which were first transcribed (Latinised) to ''plion'' and ''caenus'' and then loaned into other languages. ( became because there was no in Latin.) When this process continues over several languages, it may fail miserably to convey the original pronunciation. One ancient example is the
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
word ''dhyāna'' ("contemplation", "meditation") which was transcribed into the Chinese word ''ch'anna'' through Buddhist scriptures; next shortened into ''ch'an''. ''Ch'an'' (禪), pronounced ''zen'' in Japanese, used as the name of the Buddhist sect of "Chan" (
Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
), was transcribed from Japanese (ゼン ''zen'') to ''zen'' in English. ''Dhyāna'' to ''zen'' is quite a change. Another issue is any subsequent change in "preferred" transcription. For instance, the word describing a philosophy or religion in China was popularized in English as ''
Tao ''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophy, East Asian religions, or any other phil ...
'' and given the termination ''-ism'' to produce an English word ''Taoism''. That transcription reflects the
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles () is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's '' Chinese–English Dictionary'' of ...
system. More recent
Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
transliterations produce ''Dao'' and ''Daoism''. (See also
Daoism–Taoism romanization issue The English words Daoism () and Taoism ( or ) are alternative spellings for the same-named Chinese philosophy and religion. The root for Daoism or Taoism is the Chinese word 道 ("road" or "way"), which was transcribed '' tao'' or ''tau'' in t ...
.)


Transcription and transliteration example: "Boris Yeltsin"


See also

*
Interlinear gloss In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When gloss ...
*
Phonetic spelling A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...
*
Phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
*
Romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
*
Speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...
*
Subtitle (captioning) Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informat ...
*
Transliteration Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...


References

{{reflist Transcription (linguistics) Orthography