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Jeff Carnes 20-22 September 2010 Arabic LEARN Conference jeffrey.mrnes@nga.mil

The Difficulties of Transliterating from Arabic Maps to a Romanized Form. Jeff Carnes 20-22 September 2010 Arabic LEARN Conference jeffrey.m.carnes@nga.mil. Last updated 1/1/10. Approved for Public Release – Case # 10-315. Overview. Transliteration from Arabic to a Romanized system

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Jeff Carnes 20-22 September 2010 Arabic LEARN Conference jeffrey.mrnes@nga.mil

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  1. The Difficulties of Transliterating from Arabic Maps to a Romanized Form Jeff Carnes 20-22 September 2010 Arabic LEARN Conference jeffrey.m.carnes@nga.mil Last updated 1/1/10 Approved for Public Release – Case # 10-315

  2. Overview • Transliteration from Arabic to a Romanized system • Linguistic difficulties in transliterating Arabic • Dialect versus Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in Romanization of Arabic

  3. Why Use Native Source Maps? Ньюберг N’yuberg (BGN Russian) ≠ Newburgh The phonetic loss in transliteration back to the Roman alphabet is due to less-than-careful mapping http://www.eamerica.ru/pages/maps/states/new-york.php

  4. Why is Transliteration Important? • Information needs to be passed from native speakers to non-natives in a way both can understand • Consistency and a minimal loss of phonetic information are optimal • There are a number of transliteration systems including:

  5. Transliteration Little/no phonetic loss, difficult to use and understand for a non-speaker of Arabic Some/a lot of phonetic loss, easy to use, but hard to understand

  6. BGN Romanization System for Arabic حيّ الأعظمية h ī m z̧ ‘ A l A yy Ḩ Ḩayy Al A‘z̧amīyah (33° 22' 28" N 044° 22' 44" E, UFI ) Short vowel insertion http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/specials/images/iraqkeymaps/07.gif

  7. Why not Automatically Generate Short Vowels? All of these features in Yemen are «عمران» in Arabic ‘Amrān(عَمران)(16° 13' 49" N 043° 54' 35" E, UFI 9236592) ‘Umrān(عُمران)(14° 25' 00" N 044° 24' 00" E, UFI -3192745) ‘Imrān (عِمران)(12° 45' 27" N 044° 44' 24" E, UFI -3188111) Generating all short vowels automatically will create ambiguities in the GeoNames Search (GNS) tool عمران عمران

  8. Roots-and-Patterns in Arabic Place Names بلودان(Syria) • Blūdān (33° 43' 27" N 036° 07' 33" E, UFI -2540579) • Why [Bl]? • Aramaic root: [Bl] is allowed unlike Arabic Syria Military Survey Department, 1974

  9. Roots-and-Patterns in Arabic Place Names • الوحدة الصحية اليويرقات [sic] (Yemen) • What is the correct voweling? اليُوَيْرِقَاتj • Yuwayriqāt, Al Waḩdah aş Şiḩḩiyah al (15° 30' 20" N 048° 25' 21" E, UFI 10781255)  Al Yuwayriqāt

  10. Dialect vs. MSA in Transliteration • جبل البتراء الشرقي(Jordan, UFI -970831) • What is the phonetic value of the قin this feature? ء [glottal stop or ʔ] گ [g] ق [q] (Al-Wer, 2007) • Due to sociolinguistic change in Jordan, [ق] can be any of these phonetic values depending on dialect, gender, and age • Because of this, MSA is used as the BGN Standard ق

  11. Take Aways • Transliteration from Arabic to the BGN Romanization System for Arabic helps facilitate communication of place names among native speakers, non-native speakers, and non-speakers of Arabic. • Even with native sources of place names, linguistic challenges remain. • Currently, human reading of maps creates more accurate transliterations from Arabic script.

  12. References Al-Wer, Enam. “The Formation of the dialect of Amman: From Chaos to Order,” in Arabic in the City: Issues in Dialect Contact and Language Variation, ed. Catherine Miller, Enam Al-Wer, Dominique Caubet, Janet C.E. Watson, 55-76. New York: Routledge, 2007. “Arabic chat.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_Chat_Alphabet, 08 Aug. 2010. الزبداني (AzZabdānī). Map. Damascus: Syria Military Survey Department, 1974. BBC Arabic. “خريطة بغداد(Kharīţatbaghdād).” British Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic/specials/images/iraqkeymaps/07.gif, 08 Aug. 2010. Buckwalter, Tim. “Buckwalter Arabic Transliteration.” Qamus LLC, http://www.qamus.org/transliteration.htm, 08 Aug. 2010. EAmerica. “Карта штата Нью-Йорк (Karta ShtataN’yu-York).” http://www.eamerica.ru/pages/maps/states/new-york.php, 08 Aug. 2010. “Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Arabic_Technical_Transliteration_System, 08 Aug. 2010. Thelwall, Robin and M. AkramSa’adeddin. “Arabic,” in Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 51-54. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. U.S. Board on Geographic Names. “The United States Board on Geographic Names.” http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/bgn.htm, 08 Aug. 2010.

  13. www.nga.mil Approved for Public Release – Case # 10-035

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