Transliteration is a very complicated issue - and Wikipedia does a good job of explaining it simply .  Nevertheless, in translating and making multi-lingual material available - online and offline - the issue of transliteration is a highly specialised and one.

(image courtesy of www.arabeyes.org)

As the Arab West Report has developed over the years, much research was done into an appropriate transliteration system to use - we looked at the Al-Ahram Weekly, New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, and others for transliterating Arabic names but we did not find a standard for transliterating into Latin letters.

Some publications spell names as they are pronounced and others mix between a simplified form of modern standard Arabic (Fusha) and colloquial. Since colloquial Arabic is different from country to another and even within the same country it is difficult to use the pronunciation of names as a basis for our spelling. As a result we have adopted a simplified form of Fusha that helps us to transliterate names every time the same way. It means that names that are usually known in one particular spelling now may be spelled differently.  Some of our other partners, for example CEDRAC in Lebanon, have also developed their own transliteration system that meets their particular needs. Others, such as the Group for Arabic-Christian Research (GRAC) in Italy are doing a lot of development work on linguistics, translation and transliteration.

One of the suggestions that has come up during Phase 1 of the project is to establish a research / development project to 'combine forces' to develop a  transliteration system that could be adopted and used by several ENAWU partners - we have even discussed in principal working with some of the other international organisations that are looking at developing a machine-based transliteration system.

Although such a project is still in the ideas phase, we would welcome contributions in our discussion forum from individuals and organisations who have an interest in or experience of transliterating English and Arabic, as well as people who have been involved in this with relation to storing texts in databases or research into the development of machine transliteration applications.

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