Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System
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SATTS, or Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System, is the Morse-code equivalent mapping of Arabic letters to the Latin alphabet which is used by the military of the United States. This system, unlike most transliteration systems, removes any need for special characters by representing each Arabic letter with a unique symbol in the ASCII range to provide a one-to-one mapping from Arabic to ASCII and back. For example:
| Arabic | SATTS | Translation |
عند منتصف الليل استيقظت، كما اعتادت أن تستيقظ في هذا الوقت من كل ليلة بلا استعانة من منبٌَه أو غيره نجيب محفوظ، بين القصرين~ |
"ND MNTXF ALLIL ASTIQYT, KMA A"TADT AN TSTIQY FI ?ZA ALWQT MN KL LIL? BLA AST"AN? MN MNB? AW GIR?
~NJIB MHFWY, BIN ALQXRIN |
"She awoke at midnight, as she was accustomed to awaking at this hour every night, without relying on any kind of alarm." |
| أوْصَيْتُ الريح
أَنْ تُمَشٌطَ خٌصٌلاتِ شَعْرِك الفاحِمْ فاعْتَذرتْ بأناٌَ وقْتَها قصيرْ وَشْعَركِ طويل... نزار قباني~ |
AWXIT ALRIH
AN TM:U OXLAT :"RK ALFAHM FA"TZRT BAN WQT?A QXIR W:"RK UWIL... ~N;AR QBANI |
I asked the wind To comb the locks of your coal-black hair |
The main advantage of this system is that it can be inputted on any standard keyboard or typewriter, a necessity in most military environments. There are several disadvantages, though, aside from the obvious aesthetic ones.
The first disadvantage is that several similar, but distinct, Arabic letters are represented by one symbol in SATTS. Chief among these is the terminal ha (ه) and the taa marbuta (ة), which share the symbol '?', and the terminal yaa (ي) and the alif maqsura (ى), which share the letter 'I'. In addition, one cannot use quotes or question marks, since these are designated as letters, and there is no way to indicate short vowels. Finally, there is no standardized way to transliterate sounds that are dialect-specific (such as the Iraqi cha or the Egyptian geem) - although, to be fair, there is no consistent standard for writing these sounds in Arabic script either.
