User:Apcbg/Streamlined System for the Romanization of Bulgarian

The Streamlined System (Обтекаема система) is the official Bulgarian system for the Romanization of the Bulgarian language.

Origins and usage
The system was developed at the Department of Mathematical Logic at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences by L.L. Ivanov, and originally introduced by the Antarctic Place-names Commission of Bulgaria on March 2, 1995.

An early explanation of the Streamlined System (quoted in Gaidarska (1998) ) was made available in 1997 to the US and UK Antartcic place-naming authorities upon their request as they had noticed the difference from their BGN/PCGN romanization of Bulgarian. The new system became subject to comparative study at the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University.

Subsequently, the system was adopted by the Bulgarian Government (Ordinances #61 of 2 April 1999, #10 of 11 February 2000, #269 of 3 October 2006, and #3 of 26 October 2006 ) in identity documents, road signs, street names, official information systems, databases, local authorities’ websites etc.

Eventually, the Streamlined System became part of Bulgarian law by way of the Transliteration Law passed in 2009.

Basic principles and exceptions
The Streamlined System was designed with the aim of striking an optimal balance between the following partly overlapping and partly conflicting priorities:


 * First, the primary purpose of this system is to ensure a plausible phonetic approximation of Bulgarian words by English speaking users, including those having no knowledge of the Bulgarian language and no available additional explanations;
 * Second – and of lesser priority, the system should allow for the retrieval of the original Cyrillic spellings as much as feasible;
 * Third, transliterated Bulgarian words should fit an English language environment i.e. not be perceived as too ‘un-English’; and
 * Fourth, transliterated word forms should be streamlined and simple.

Exceptions: Authentic Roman spellings of names of non-Bulgarian origin have priority, as do traditional Roman spellings that exist for few Bulgarian names.

Invertibility
The system is not invertible, for А, Ж, Й, Ц, Ш, Щ, Ю, Я are transliterated in the same way as are Ъ, ЗХ, Ь, ТС, СХ,ШТ, ЙУ, ЙА respectively. An auxiliary, invertible variant of the system is proposed by L. Ivanov, D. Skordev and D. Dobrev to be used in those special cases when the exact retrieval of Bulgarian words from their Romanized forms is a priority, with Cyrillic letters and combinations of letters А, Ъ, Й, Ь, ЗХ, ЙА, ЙУ, СХ, ТС, ТШ, ТЩ, ШТ, ШЦ transliterated as A, `A, Y, `Y, Z|H, Y|A, Y|U, S|H, T|S, T|SH, T|SHT, SH|T, SH|TS respectively.

Comparison with other systems
The Streamlined System is based on an English-oriented transliteration, taking advantage of the global lingua franca role of English, with its wider comprehension facilitated by the fact that non-English speakers from many nations have their own languages and non-Roman writing systems Romanized by English-oriented transliteration or transcription too. A similar shift towards English-oriented transliteration is observed in the case of other Cyrillic alphabets, notably Russian and Ukrainian.

Diacritics are avoided, making the system more user-friendly for the purposes of modern electronic communication (e-mail, instant messaging, short message service etc.), and obviating the need for additional conventions and explanation. In that respect the Streamlined System is dissimilar to the scientific transliteration of Bulgarian (1956 Bulgarian standard, or Andreychin System), with the latter using Ž•ž, Č•č, Š•š, ŠT•št and Ă•ă for Ж•ж, Ч•ч, Ш•ш, Щ•щ and Ъ•ъ respectively. (It should be noted however, that the Bulgarian state standard of scientific transliteration included also a diacritics-free version intended for telegraph and mail communications, with letters Ж•ж, Ч•ч, Ш•ш, Щ•щ and Ъ•ъ rendered exactly as in the Streamlined System.) Furthermore, the two systems differ in rendering the Cyrillic letters Й•й, Ц•ц, Ь•ь, Ю•ю, Я•я as Y•y, TS•ts, Y•y, YU•yu, YA•ya and J•j, C•c, J•j, JU•ju, JA•ja respectively.

The essential difference between the Streamlined System and the closely related Danchev System (or rather Danchev-Holman-Dimova-Savova System) is the case of the Cyrillic letters У•у and Ъ•ъ, rendered as U•u, A•a and OU•ou, U•u respectively. Furthermore, the latter system transliterates the digraphs АЙ•ай, ЕЙ•ей, ОЙ•ой and УЙ•уй by AI•ai, EI•ei, OI•oi and OUI•oui instead of AY•ay, EY•ey, OY•oy and UY•uy respectively.

The Streamlined System is similar also to the 1952 BGN/PCGN System for the Romanization of Bulgarian, still official in the USA and the United Kingdom. The latter however transliterates the Cyrillic letters Х•х, Ь•ь and Ъ•ъ as KH•kh, ’ (apostrophe) and Ŭ•ŭ, while the former uses H•h, Y•y and A•a instead.

The streamlined approach could be applied also in the Romanization of other Cyrillic alphabets such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian and Macedonian, as well as in the re-Romanization and pronunciation respelling of English.