Devanagari transliteration
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There are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī into Roman scripts. The most widely used transliteration methods are IAST (for print) and ITRANS (for e-text). However, there are other transliteration options.
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[edit] Major transliteration methods
The following are the major transliteration methods for Devanāgarī:
[edit] IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the most popular academic standard for the romanization of Sanskrit. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts.
The National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.
[edit] ISO 15919
A standard transliteration convention not just for Devanagari, but for all South-Asian languages was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001, providing the basis for modern digital libraries that conform to International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) norms. ISO 15919 defines the common Unicode basis for Roman transliteration of South-Asian texts in a wide variety of languages/scripts.
ISO 15919 transliterations are platform-independent texts, so that they can be used identically on all modern operating systems and software packages, as long as they comply with ISO norms. This is a prerequisite for all modern platforms, so that ISO 15919 has become the new standard for digital libraries and archives for transliterating all South Asian texts.
The German/Indian manuscript digitization initiative e-ternals.com has published a Virtual Keyboard for generating ISO 15919 transliteration visually and at high speed, generating all characters (including composite ones) at a single mouse-click. This package is called Vamana and can be obtained from its developer, Gunthard Mueller (gm@e-ternals.com). Vamana is available for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Solaris. Vamana also comes with the Kala font family for ISO 15919, compatible with all modern operating systems. The technical basis of Vamana is similar to the one adopted by the Greek government for encoding the Greek alphabet in Unicode in ISO 10646. Vamana therefore has a parallel cousin called Nanos, a Virtual Keyboard for generating ISO 10646 compliant Modern and Ancient Greek text (for details see http://www.e-ternals.com/nanos).
ISO 15919 uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic graphemes to the Latin script. See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard, IAST: "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", and to the United States Library of Congress standard, ALA-LC: [1]
[edit] ASCII schemes
[edit] Harvard-Kyoto
Compared to IAST, Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.
[edit] ITRANS scheme
ITRANS is an extension of Harvard-Kyoto. Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS.
ITRANS is not only used as transliteration. It is also a pre-processor for typing in Indic scripts. The user inputs in roman letters and the ITRANS preprocessor displays the roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001.
[edit] Transliteration Comparison
The following is a comparison of the major transliteration methods used for Devanāgarī.
[edit] Vowels
| Devanāgarī | IAST | Harvard-Kyoto | ITRANS |
|---|---|---|---|
| अ | a | a | a |
| आ | ā | A | A/aa |
| इ | i | i | i |
| ई | ī | I | I/ii |
| उ | u | u | u |
| ऊ | ū | U | U/uu |
| ए | e | e | e |
| ऐ | ai | ai | ai |
| ओ | o | o | o |
| औ | au | au | au |
| ऋ | ṛ | R | RRi/R^i |
| ॠ | ṝ | RR | RRI/R^I |
| ऌ | ḷ | lR | LLi/L^i |
| ॡ | ḹ | lRR | LLI/L^I |
| अं | ṃ | M | M/.n/.m |
| अः | ḥ | H | H |
[edit] Consonants
The Devanāgarī consonant letters include an implicit 'a' sound. In all of the transliteration systems, that 'a' sound must be represented explicitly.
| Devanāgarī | IAST | Harvard-Kyoto | ITRANS |
|---|---|---|---|
| क | ka | ka | ka |
| ख | kha | kha | kha |
| ग | ga | ga | ga |
| घ | gha | gha | gha |
| ङ | ṅa | Ga | ~Na |
| च | ca | ca | cha |
| छ | cha | cha | Cha |
| ज | ja | ja | ja |
| झ | jha | jha | jha |
| ञ | ña | Ja | ~na |
| ट | ṭa | Ta | Ta |
| ठ | ṭha | Tha | Tha |
| ड | ḍa | Da | Da |
| ढ | ḍha | Dha | Dha |
| ण | ṇa | Na | Na |
| त | ta | ta | ta |
| थ | tha | tha | tha |
| द | da | da | da |
| ध | dha | dha | dha |
| न | na | na | na |
| प | pa | pa | pa |
| फ | pha | pha | pha |
| ब | ba | ba | ba |
| भ | bha | bha | bha |
| म | ma | ma | ma |
| य | ya | ya | ya |
| र | ra | ra | ra |
| ल | la | la | la |
| व | va | va | va/wa |
| श | śa | za | sha |
| ष | ṣa | Sa | Sha |
| स | sa | sa | sa |
| ह | ha | ha | ha |
[edit] Consonant Clusters
In the transliteration systems, there is no special representation for a consonant cluster.
| Devanāgarī | IAST | Harvard-Kyoto | ITRANS |
|---|---|---|---|
| क्ष | kṣa | kSa | kSa/kSha/xa |
| त्र | tra | tra | tra |
| ज्ञ | jña | jJa | GYa/j~na |
| श्र | śra | zra | shra |
[edit] Other Consonants
| Devanāgarī | ITRANS |
|---|---|
| क़ | qa |
| ख़ | Kha |
| ग़ | Ga |
| ज़ | za |
| फ़ | fa |
| ड़ | .Da/Ra |
| ढ़ | .Dha/Rha |
Note: both ड़ and ऋ use the diacritic "ṛ" in IAST
[edit] Details
[edit] Pronunciation of the final "a"
Devanāgarī consonants include an 'inherent a' sound that must be explicitly represented with an 'a' character in the transliteration. Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original Sanskrit. This final 'inherent a' is often no longer pronounced in some Sanskrit-derived Indian languages, including Hindi. This results in an alternative 'modern' transliteration that omits it.
- Sanskrit: Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaņa, Śiva
- Hindi: Mahābhārat, Rāmāyaņ, Śiv
Some words keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:
e.g; Krishna, vajra, Maurya
Some Indian languages, like Kannada, continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some, like Marathi, have an intermediate pronunciation.
[edit] Retroflex consonants
Most Indian languages make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters. E.g., in IAST transliteration, the retroflex forms are ṇ, ṭ, ḍ and ṣ.
In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated.
[edit] Aspirated consonants
Where the letter "h" appears after a plosive consonant in Devanāgarī transliteration, it always indicates aspiration, thus "ph" is pronounced as the p in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said) never as the ph in "photo". On the other hand "p" is pronounced as the p in "spit" with no release of air. Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the th of "this" or the th of "thin".
The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems.
[edit] History of Sanskrit Transliteration
Early Sanskrit texts were originally transmitted by memorization and repetition. Post-Harappan India had no system for writing Indic languages until the creation (in the 4th-3rd centuries BCE) of the Kharoshti and Brahmi scripts. These writing systems, though adequate for Middle Indic languages, were not well-adapted to writing Sanskrit. However, later descendants of Brahmi were modified so that they could record Sanskrit in exacting phonetic detail. The earliest physical text in Sanskrit is a rock inscription by the Western Kshatrapa ruler Rudradaman, written c. 150 CE in Junagadh, Gujarat. Due to the remarkable proliferation of different varieties of Brahmi in the Middle Ages, there is today no single script used for writing Sanskrit; rather, Sanskrit scholars can write the language in a form of whatever script is used to write their local language. However, since the late Middle Ages, there has been a tendency to use Devanagari for writing Sanskrit texts for a widespread readership.
Western scholars in the 19th century adopted Devanagari for printed editions of Sanskrit texts. The editio princeps of the Rigveda by Max Müller was in Devanagari, a typographical tour de force at the time. Müller's London typesetters competed with their Petersburg peers working on Böhtlingk's and Roth's dictionary in cutting all the required ligature types.
From its beginnings, Western Sanskrit philology also felt the need for a romanized spelling of the language. Franz Bopp in 1816 used a romanization scheme, alongside Devanagari, differring from IAST in expressing vowel length by a circumflex (â, î, û), and aspiration by a spiritus asper (e.g. bʽ for IAST bh). The sibilants IAST ṣ and ś he expressed with spiritus asper and lenis, respectively (sʽ, sʼ). Monier-Williams in his 1899 dictionary used ṡ and sh for IAST ś and ṣ, respectively.
From the late 19th century, Western interest in typesetting Devanagari decreased. Theodor Aufrecht published his 1877 edition of the Rigveda in romanized Sanskrit, and Arthur Macdonell's 1910 Vedic grammar (and 1916 Vedic grammar for students) likewise do without Devanagari (while his introductory Sanskrit grammar for students retains Devanagari alongside romanized Sanskrit). Contemporary Western editions of Sanskrit texts appear mostly in IAST.
[edit] See also
- The National Library at Kolkata romanization, and ISO 15919 are extensions of IAST to transcribe all Indic scripts
- ISCII is an 8-bit encoding for Indic scripts
- ITRANS - Most famous transliteration scheme used in Phonetic Hindi typing tools
[edit] External links
- Romanized Latin to Sanskrit - Converts Harvard-Kyoto transliterations into Unicode Devanagari
- HiTrans - Extended ITRANS scheme and real-time Unicode conversion tool
- Quillpad - Intuitive real-time Transliteration for Indian languages
- Google Indic Transliteration - real-time Latin-to-Indic character transliteration
- Girgit Online Indic to Indic Transliteration of Webpages বংলা (Bengali), हिन्दी (Devanagari), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada), മലയാളം (Malayalam), ଓଡ଼ିଆ (Oriya), ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ (Punjabi), தமிழ் (Tamil), తెలుగు (Telugu), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), English
