Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of

electronic communication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

s, starting from early

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

and

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

s.Notice of cancellation of automatic volapuk encoding (1997)
(Russian, in KOI8-R encoding) Their use faded with the advances in the

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

that made support of

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

standard, but resurfaced with the proliferation of

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

and

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

messaging in Russia.

Development

Due to its informal character, there was neither a well-established standard nor a common name. In the early days of e-mail, the humorous term "

Volapuk encoding Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems. More recently the term "

translit Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems.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 most probably its usage originated in several places. An example of early "translit" is the

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...

program TRANSLIT by Jan Labanowski, which runs from the

command prompt Command Prompt, also known as cmd.exe or cmd, is the default command-line interpreter for the OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, Microsoft Windows (Windows NT family and Windows CE family), and ReactOS operating systems. On Windows CE .NET 4.2, Wind ...

to convert a Cyrillic file to a Latin one using a specified transliteration table. There are two basic varieties of romanization of Russian: transliterations and

Leetspeak Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. ...

-type of rendering of Russian text. The latter one is often heavily saturated with common English words, which are often much shorter than the corresponding Russian ones, and is sometimes referred to as

Runglish Runglish, Ruslish, Russlish (russian: рунглиш, руслиш, русслиш), or Russian English, is a term describing a language born out of a mixture of the English language, English and Russian language, Russian languages. This is a comm ...

or Russlish.

Translit

Translit is a method of encoding

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

letters with

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

ones. The term is derived from

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 ...

, the system of replacing letters of one alphabet with letters of another. Translit found its way into web forums, chats, messengers, emails,

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

s and other network games. Some Cyrillic web sites had a translit version for cases of encoding problems. As computer and network technologies developed support for the Cyrillic script, translit fell into disrepute. Sometimes translit users were ignored or even banned in Cyrillic-using communities. Translit received its last development impulse with the increasing availability of

s in Cyrillic-using countries. At first, the situation was the same as with computers; neither mobile phones nor

mobile network operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...

s supported Cyrillic. Although mobile phone technology now supports Unicode including all variants of Cyrillic alphabets, a single

in Unicode is limited to 70 characters, whereas a Latinate SMS can have up to 160 characters. If a message exceeds the character limit, it is split into multiple parts. That makes messages written in Cyrillic more expensive. Sometimes ⟨y⟩, ⟨yu⟩, ⟨yo⟩, ⟨ye⟩, ⟨ya⟩ serve as transliteration for ⟨й⟩, ⟨ю⟩, ⟨ё⟩, ⟨е⟩, ⟨я⟩. Lately a more aggressive form of translit appeared, its identifying characteristic being the use of numbers to substitute some of the letters. For example, 4 reads as "ch" and is used to translit letter "ч", from the transliteration of the word "four" in Russian ("Chetyre", четыре), or, arguably, the appearance of the letter similar to that of four in

Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...

. Also, a number can substitute its whole name as part of a word: "sov7" for "sovsem" ("completely") or "posmo3" for "posmotri" ("have a look", imperative). Such translit is often so distorted that native speakers have trouble reading it. The use of translit is forbidden on many Internet forums.

and other

former Soviet republics The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...

adopted the

ISO 9 ISO 9 is an international standard establishing a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters constituting the alphabets of many Slavic and non-Slavic languages. Published on February 23, 1995 by the International ...

transliteration standard for official use (under the designation 7.79-2000), replacing the old Soviet

GOST 16876-71 GOST 16876-71 (russian: ГОСТ 16876-71) is a romanization system (for transliteration of Russian Cyrillic alphabet texts into the Latin alphabet) devised by the National Administration for Geodesy and Cartography of the Soviet Union. It is based ...

Translit in Bulgaria

A modified version of Translit, called Shlyokavitsa or Maimunitsa is used widely on the Internet in Bulgaria. It is similar to Russian translit, except for the following differences: * ⟨ъ⟩ can be transliterated as ⟨a⟩, ⟨u⟩ and ⟨y⟩ and rarely as ⟨1⟩ * ⟨я⟩ is usually transliterated as ⟨q⟩, but ⟨ya⟩, ⟨ja⟩ and ⟨ia⟩ can be seen * ⟨ч⟩ is transliterated as either ⟨4⟩ or ⟨ch⟩ * ⟨ц⟩ is transliterated as either ⟨ts⟩ or ⟨c⟩ * ⟨ж⟩ is transliterated as ⟨j⟩, sometimes ⟨v⟩ * ⟨ю⟩ is transliterated as either ⟨iu⟩, ⟨yu⟩, ⟨ju⟩ or ⟨u⟩ * ⟨й⟩ is transliterated as either ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩ or ⟨j⟩ * ⟨ь⟩ is usually transliterated either the same as ⟨й⟩, or omitted * ⟨ш⟩ is transliterated as ⟨6⟩ or ⟨sh⟩ * ⟨в⟩ is mostly transliterated as ⟨v⟩, but ⟨w⟩ has been seen due to the placement of the letter on the Bulgarian phonetic traditional keyboard * ⟨щ⟩ is transliterated as ⟨6t⟩ or ⟨sht⟩ Some of these transliterations come from the placement of the letters on the Bulgarian phonetic traditional keyboard, even if the corresponding latin letter has nothing in common: * ⟨я⟩ as ⟨q⟩ * ⟨ъ⟩ as ⟨y⟩ * ⟨ц⟩ as ⟨c⟩ * ⟨ж⟩ as ⟨v⟩ Some people type in Shlyokavitsa entirely like there were on the Bulgarian phonetic traditional keyboard, leading to some symbols being used: * ⟨ч⟩ as ⟨ ` ⟩ * ⟨ш⟩ as ⟨ ⟩ * ⟨щ⟩ as ⟨ ⟩ * ⟨ю⟩ as ⟨ \ ⟩ This leads to things like spelling "чушка" (pepper) as ⟨`u[ka⟩.

Volapuk encoding

Volapuk encoding (russian: кодировка "волапюк", ''kodirovka "volapük"'') or ''latinitsa'' (латиница) is a slang term for rendering the letters of the

with

ones. Unlike

Translit Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems.Volapük Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an i ...

, for two reasons. Cyrillic text written in this way looks strange and often funny, just as a Volapük-language text may appear. At the same time, the word "Volapük" ("Волапюк/Воляпюк" ''Volapyuk/Volyapyuk'' in Russian) itself sounds close to the words "воля" (will) and "пук" (fart), funny enough for the name to have stuck. The term was popularized by its use in the first

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

commercially available

UUCP UUCP is an acronym of Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the prog ...

and

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

network,

RELCOM RELCOM or Relcom (russian: РЕЛКОМ, Релком), an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in Russia. It was launched in the Soviet Union on August 1, 1990 in the Kurchatov Institute in collaboration with DEMOS co-operat ...

(a typical networking software package included Cyrillic

KOI-8 KOI-8 (КОИ-8) is an 8-bit character set standardized in GOST 19768-74. Маркелова Л. Н. Эксплуатация программоуправляемой вычислительной машины «Искра 226». — М.: Ма ...

to ''Volapuk'' transcoding utilities called ''tovol'' and ''fromvol'', originally implemented by

Vadim Antonov Vadim Antonov (russian: Антонов Вадим Геннадьевич) born May 25, 1965 is a Russian-American software engineer and entrepreneur. He is known for his work on operating systems, Internet backbone networks, network router hardw ...

), making it the likely origin of the usage of ''Volapuk'' as applied to Cyrillic encoding.

History

Volapuk and

Translit Informal or ''ad hoc'' romanizations of Cyrillic have been in use since the early days of electronic communications, starting from early e-mail and bulletin board systems.Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

to write

messages and other texts in Russian where the support of Cyrillic fonts was limited: either the sender did not have a keyboard with Cyrillic letters or the receiver did not necessarily have Cyrillic screen fonts. In the early days, the situation was aggravated by a number of mutually incompatible computer encodings for the Cyrillic script, so that the sender and receiver were not guaranteed to have the same one. Also, the 7-bit character

encoding In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

of the early days was an additional hindrance. Some Russian e-mail providers even included Volapuk encoding in the list of available options for the e-mails routed abroad, e.g., :"MIME/BASE64, MIME/Quoted-Printable, ''volapuk'', uuencode"A note of cancellation of automatic volapuk encoding (1997)
By the late 1990s, the encoding problem had been almost completely resolved, due to increasing support from software manufacturers and Internet service providers. Volapuk still maintains a level of use for SMS text messages, because it is possible to fit more characters in a Latinized SMS message than a Unicode one. It is also used in computer games that do not allow Cyrillic text in chat, particularly ''

Counter-Strike ''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to preven ...

''.

Rules

Volapuk often replaces Cyrillic letters with Latin ones in order to look the same or at least similar as typed or handwritten Cyrillic letters. # Replace "the same" letters: a, e, K, M, T, o. Capitalize when necessary for closer resemblance (к: K better than k, м: M better than m, т: T better than t (which looks exactly like 'm' in handwritten Cyrillic). # Replace similar-looking letters: в – B, г – r (handwritten resemblance), з – 3 (i.e. number three), л – J, or /\ (the last is again handwritten resemblance), н – Н, п – n (handwritten resemblance), р – p, с – c, у – y, х – x, ч – 4, я – R, и – N. This may vary. # Replace all other non-obvious hard-to-represent characters using

leet Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. ...

(any combination of Latin letters, numbers or punctuation that might bear a passing resemblance to the Cyrillic letter in question); there are many options for each letter. (For example, letter 'щ' can be encoded in more than 15 different ways). Examples: ж – *, щ – LLI_, э – -) and so on. The choice for each letter depends on the preferences of the individual user. Encoding depends on the language as well. For example, Ukrainian-speaking usersInstructions at the Ukrainian chat server ''Nyshporka''
have their own traditions, distinct from the Russian ones.

Table

Example

* Советский Союз (Cyrillic) 'Soviet Union''* CoBeTcKuu' CoIO3 ("volapuk") * Sovetskiy Soyuz (transliteration)

Russian Chat Alphabet

The Russian Chat Alphabet is a fast-to-type mix of translit and Volapuk, being translit mostly, but giving the option to replace some 2 or 3 character transliterations with shorter 1 character counterparts from Volapuk. This speeds up typing; however, in some cases characters may be Volapuk-encoded, making text appear incorrectly and therefore be harder or impossible to read. In

and countries where Russian is used regularly to communicate via

and

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

, it is used as an alternative and free style of

. It also works around the limitations of programs and/or devices where a Cyrillic keyboard is not available. Within Russia, one reason to use transliteration for Russian text is that mobile characters allow for more

Latin characters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

than Cyrillic ones per SMS: Latin and capital

Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as w ...

are covered by the GSM seven-bit alphabet, allowing up to 160 such characters in a message, while Cyrillic letters are not, requiring a 16-bit encoding that limits messages to 70 characters. In this case, the focus is of course on getting one Latin character (of which there are 26) for each Cyrillic character (of which there are 33 in Russian, and additional characters in

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

and other languages using Cyrillic script). Only those used for Russian are exemplified here. Where variants are given, the first is most common and the last is less common, although trends change quickly and differ from person to person. Lack of standardization is the biggest weakness of this informal transliterations, as different styles contradict each other and can make reading slower than necessary. I

References

Bibliography

*Frolov, A.V. and Frolov, G.V. ''Electronic Mail. Your Internet Companion'' (А.В. Фролов, Г.В. Фролов, "Электронная почта. Ваш спутник в Интернете") ''Russkaya Redaktsiya Publishers'' (''Русская Редакция'') (2000)
Chapter 6 online

External links

RUS1.NET
— 1:1 (univocal) transliteration map for learners of Russian, links to free auto-transliteration and IME tools for Firefox and Chrome.
Example on-line transliterator (in Russian)

Translit external links

Kbd.winrus.com
Online Service for Cyrillic (Russian and Ukrainian) – Virtual Keyboard "No translit!"

Known problems of Transliteration Services and modern alternatives
Translit.biz
Non-trivial Russian-English Transliteration (for domain names and URLs).
Translit Ru/En
Online Russian-English Transliteration, supports multiple transliteration standards and spell check.
Translit.ru
Russian-English transliterator and spell checker (in Russian).
Translit.site
online service of transliteration. It supports different Russian-English translit standards.
Translit.tv
Russian-Latin transliterator, spell checker and translator (in Russian).
Русский ТРАНСЛИТ
a transliterator that also works on mobile devices {{Internet Dialects

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Russian language Russian-language computing