Talk:Devanagari transliteration

Should Romenagri Transliteration be included on this page
Just a quick poll on whether you find Romenagri transliteration that is used in Hindawi Programming System ] notable enough for inclusion here?

Intelligent Transliteration?
I feel this section does not belong in an article on Devanagari transliteration. It's general enough to be found in an article on transliteration itself. I propose that this paragraph be deleted. Sarayuparin 18:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and since there's no other comment, I'm removing it. If it is to be used anywhere, it needs a reference. Imc 18:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Missing: chandra-bindu (amunaasika)
I noticed here that the amunaasika diacritic, which in ITRANS I believe is represented by .N, is missing from the tables on this page. I do not feel I have enough understanding of Wikipedia standards to make the edit and do not know the transliteration for Chandra-Bindu in the other transliteration schema. Could someone please make the change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeffreybenner (talk • contribs) 17:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Missing: diacritical marks in general
I would like this section, in addition to chandra-bindu, to have a complete section on diacritical marks. Google now has an excellent cheatsheet at http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/about_mappings_hi.html. If an ITRANS expert could verify please that the Google mappings are correct ITRANS I would like to see diacriticals and special marks such as virama ( ्  ITRANS: V ) and abbreviation ( ॰ ITRANS: Ho ) represented in this page. I would do it but I do not think I understand Wikipedia editing guidelines yet sufficiently well.

Jeffreybenner (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * What exactly do you mean by diacritical marks? Do you mean the characters in the "other consonants" section? The page mentions what actually exists in these transliteration schemes… Shreevatsa (talk) 17:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, note WP:Be Bold! Please do feel free to make whatever changes you think is appropriate; someone will fix them if there is a mistake. See How to edit a page or ask someone (e.g. me!) if you need further help. Shreevatsa (talk) 18:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Velthuis transliteration and case sensitivity
You write that unlike other ASCII systems Velthuis transliteration does not suffer from case sensitivity. However, this is not true. I am not in the Velthuis Devanagari Project from its very beginning thus I am not able to write whether the transliteration has changed, I am only aware of adding ~m as the second possibility for candrabindu. The transliteration scheme has dual possibilities, sometimes similarly as in ITRANS, आ = A/aa, simetimes different, ख = K/kh. It helps to write some words more easily, e.g. कई can be transliterated either as ka{}ii or kaI but not kaii which would become कैइ.

I will update this section and fix the tables. However, we need another character for denoting alternatives because a slash is used for candrabindu. --Zdeněk Wagner (talk) 15:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you sure? I think I remember reading in some document (written by Velthuis) that both ka and Ka (and KA as well) stood for "क", and ख was either kha or Kha. (That is, case was indeed irrelevant.) I'll try finding the source, but in the meantime it would be helpful if you provided yours. Regards, Shreevatsa (talk) 20:46, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

IAST
Needs much more prominence on this page. It is the de-facto standard. Wakari07 (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Other Writing Systems and Languages
What about all the other languages in India and the world? Are there not any forms of transliteration other than simply Romanization? How about transliteration to Bangali, Tamil, Gujarati, Arabic, Cyrillic, Telugu, etc. SumilBhatt (talk) 16:17, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Sir Monier William's work on transliteration of Indian languages
http://books.google.com/books?id=FyRFAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=NIeyt2Tqzw0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 15:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Attempted writing reforms and romanization of Hindi
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/windref.htm

Rajmaan (talk) 16:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

What came before Hunterian?
Quaint Anglo-Indian transliterations probably dating back even before the British Raj -- with their ee-s, oo-s and gunj-es -- are still with us. This article should provide some history of what preceeded the Hunterian system. LADave (talk) 09:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there any transliteration system TO Devanagari ?
I want to transliterate Latin script to Devanagari and I fail to find, how I should distinguish for example 'e' and 'ē', or how I should transliterate dipthongs like "eu" and "ei". KirkeCypris (talk) 10:11, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Unless the original transliteration was done in a rigorous system, always following its rules, you can't transliterate back to devanagari with complete accuracy. Either you must independently know  how the words should be spelled, or you must often look them up.  Fortunately it's getting much easier to type in 'Nagari and then search the words online, and there are decent English-to-whatever dictionaries too.


 * Dipthongs are tricky. Some words seem to be written with individual vowels rather than the dipthong characters that seem logical.
 * LADave (talk) 11:33, 8 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Devanagari evolved for writing Sanskrit and daughter languages, so it may not be appropriate for languages whose set of vowels is different. For instance in Sanskrit there are sandhi rules that require any two consecutive vowels to form a new one.
 * However, in this case, Devanagari does have symbols for "short e" and "short o" (although Sanskrit and Hindi have only the long vowels that you might write as ē and ō when distinguishing from e and o, but when writing Sanskrit or Hindi are often simply written e and o).
 * You can use this transliteration tool I wrote. Entering "memē popō seundeipo" in the "ISO 15919, lowercase" box gives "मॆमे पॊपो सॆउन्दॆइपॊ". Note however that the short "e"s are not very common -- not all readers may be aware of them. So some readers may need some training to read it as intended, though. :-)
 * What are you trying to do, if I may ask? What is the sort of text that you want to transliterate into Devanagari? Shreevatsa (talk) 12:01, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

More on history
I was glancing at Staal's A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, and it contains this: "All Roman transliterations now in use go back to William Jones's "A Dissertation on the Orthography of Asiatick Words in Roman Letters" of 1786. As Sir M. Monier Monier-Williams told the Royal Asiatic Society in 1890: "as a result of a kind of natural selection or survival of the fittest, the practice of all Oriental scholars — so far as Āryan languages are concerned — is settling down into an acceptance of Sir William Jones' principles of transliteration" ((quoted by G. H. Cannon in Sebeok 1966,1, 56)."

That "Sebeok 1966" is "Portraits of Linguists. A Biographical Source Book for the History of Western Linguistics, 1746-1963, vols 1-2.". Along with the Monier-Williams book mentioned in another section above (http://books.google.com/books?id=FyRFAAAAcAAJ), some of this should be a good fit for the "history" section. Shreevatsa (talk) 08:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Any Sanskrit to Hindi or English Transliteration software or Tool available?
I searched a lot but found none. I want to read Sanskrit Slokas but i dont understand it. So i wanted to Transliterate it. If anybody know plz give me link

Or if anysuch project going on? Drajaytripathi (talk) 19:58, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Transliteration is between scripts, not languages. (Transliteration is not translation.) If you want Devanagari to Roman transliteration, then there are many many tools available — e.g. they will transliterate "कृष्णाय नमः" to "kṛṣṇāya namaḥ". From your description I think this is not what you want, and you want translation instead. Shreevatsa (talk) 04:11, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

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External links modified
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Romanization of Devanagari
Why the page is not called "Romanization of Devanagari" like all the other pages as it talks specifically about transliteration into Latin characters.--Targumferera (talk) 09:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Dubious tag: Fixed contradiction but 1972 source is outdated
From my edit summary:


 * Translation [(Oops.) Transliteration] to the Roman script and romanization are the same things. The 1972 source meant that there is no standard version. Template:Dubious: We need to know if this is still true as of 2016. Use Template:As of in lead when researched.

I fixed the problem of the intro saying that transliteration to Roman script is different from romanization. However, we need a much more up-to-date source than one from 1972. Things probably have changed significantly.

You can compare the changed text with the original here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Devanagari_transliteration&diff=736579250&oldid=722608134

Sorry all I can do is point this out! My major oops in the edit summary shows I need to stop editing a bit. :) Thanks, —Geekdiva (talk) 13:12, 28 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Transliteration and romanization are definitely not the same.
 * The goal of romanization is simply to represent sounds in the Roman script. For example, if we're talking of Hindi, the words राम and मन्त्र may be romanized as Ram (or Raam) and mantra.
 * The goal of transliteration is to represent exactly what is written in one script in another. For example, we may transliterate राम as Rāma and राम् as Rām even though a Hindi speaker would pronounce both of them identically, and similarly transliterate मन्त्र as mantra and मंत्र as maṃtra to exactly represent what the source script contained.
 * The article is very confused on this matter and makes a lot of false claims based on this misunderstanding. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:38, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Possible vandalism by IP user 50.165.173.42
By IP user Special:Contributions/50.165.173.42's recent contributions to Devanagari transliteration have been undone because they did not appear constructive. Regarding edits in Devanagari transliteration Special:Contributions/50.165.173.42, adding to table undefined content and without reliable source here at edit 1 and at edit 2 and also masking the already present correct contents of SLP column in vowels table and masking iTRANS in other consonants table by using pipe trick is not productive editing and possible vandalism. Thanks, 2know4power (talk) 03:29, 15 February 2017 (UTC).


 * It could be intentional vandalism, or it could just be someone not very familiar with Wikipedia. Either way, if the changes do not improve the article, they should be removed. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:31, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Shreevatsa. Will remove the mistakes caused by edit 1 and at edit 2 by IP user Special:Contributions/50.165.173.42. By contibutor 2know4power (talk) 19:46, 16 February 2017 (UTC).
 * Hello Shreevatsa, I have added request for temporary semi-protection for the tables' section only,  here (meaning unregistered accounts are not able to edit). We will see what happens. Thanks, 2know4power (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC).



Temporary semi-protection: Persistent addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content – Article Devanagari transliteration's section Transliteration comparison has tables. Unsourced or disruptive edits or vandalism to the tables by unregistered IP user Special:Contributions/50.165.173.42. Their other 2 edits to 2 other articles are removed too. Earliest edit diff for other article seems to be related to blog, Gujalish, (May be Gujarati language with English is Gujalish.) Gujalish. In article Devanagari transliteration's section Transliteration comparison's table they have added unsourced, undefined content, possibly wrong & they have hidden by pipe trick pre existing good encylopedic information. This constitutes vandalism. The relevant edit diffs are edit 1 and at edit 2. About this vandalism, talkpage discussion at article, notice placed at disruptive IP user's talkpage. Correcting these mistakes in the comparison tables section is very difficult and time consuming. Please add semi protected status to this section atleast Devanagari transliteration's section Transliteration comparison,  so disruptive edits or vandalism can be lessened from unregistered IP users. Thanks, by contributor 2know4power (talk) 21:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC).: Declined – Not enough recent disruptive activity to justify protection. Last edit of IP 50.xxx was more than a month ago. User:Lectonar(08:21, 17 February 2017 (UTC))

Major problems with this article
I worked on this article a few years ago; returning to it now I see some major problems with it. The primary one is that the article is lackadaisical in using "transliteration" and "transcription" interchangeably. (The word "romanization" can sometimes mean the former and sometimes the latter.) See the lead of the current version of the transliteration article:

"For instance, a Latin transliteration of the Greek phrase "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", usually translated as 'Hellenic Republic', is "Ellēnikḗ Dēmokratía".

Transliteration is not concerned with representing the sounds of the original, only the characters, ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the above example, λλ is transliterated as 'll', but pronounced /l/; Δ is transliterated as 'D', but pronounced 'ð'; and η is transliterated as 'ē', though it is pronounced /i/ (exactly like ι) and is not long.

Conversely, transcription notes the sounds but not necessarily the spelling. So "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" could be transcribed as "elinikí ðimokratía", which does not specify which of the /i/ sounds are written as η and which as ι."

The article Romanagari, about which there is merge notice at the top of the page, is mainly about "transcription". The so-called "Hunterian system", to which a major chunk of this article is devoted, is also a system of transcription, not transliteration (though misleadingly called that in a few sources). It is perfectly fine to talk about both things in the same article, but the article should be clear to distinguish the two, and be clear at any point which one is intended. Shreevatsa (talk) 17:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

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Please un-revert corrections to Devanagari_Transliteration
Please allow the corrections to the consonant table of April 30, 2018 to remain. The table has about 20 errors in it, my corrections reverted by ClassicWiki. 66.160.194.61 (talk) 23:28, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 66.160.194.61, please consider providing a source for the changes. I understand that this page may contain errors, but it is lacking a verification. If you can provide a source for the changes it would be easier to accept the revisions. Best, Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 00:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

The source is clicking the column headers to visit the main pages for each transliteration. The first column and the last (WX) were the only correct ones.
 * 76.173.121.51/66.160.194.61, I have reverted the edits, but know that Wikipedia can't serve as a sole source. The WX notation is different between the two pages and that concerns me. Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 15:57, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Excessive external links
The External links section is excessive. There should not be a dozen links to online transliteration websites. Please see: WP:NOTLINKFARM, as well as WP:ELNO and WP:LINKSPAM.

It might be ok to link one high-quality one, but it should be provided by a recognized authority; articles should not have external links to: "Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites (negative ones included), except those written by a recognized authority. (This exception for blogs, etc., controlled by recognized authorities is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities who are individuals always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for people.)" (WP:ELNO #11). --IamNotU (talk) 00:21, 25 April 2020 (UTC)