one more look at the problem of transliteration

One More Look at the Problem of TransliterationAuthor(s): William EdgertonSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 97-99Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2498689 .

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WILLIAM EDGERTON

One More Look at the Problem of Transliteration

In the United States we are saddled with three different systems for the transliteration of Russian, and none of the three is satisfactory enough to replace the other two. The so-called Popular System gives general readers a rough idea of how to pronounce Rus- sian words within the sound system of English, but it does not accurately reflect the original Russian (for example, does voskresenie represent BOCKpeceHbe or BOCKpe- ceH4e?) The International Scholarly System is exact and simple: in its American variant (which uses x instead of the continental European ch to transliterate the Russian x) each Russian letter is represented by a single Latin letter. It is ideal and widely ac- cepted for works in linguistics and for literary studies that are aimed at an international scholarly audience. But the diacritical marks and the value assigned to the letter c (which in this system represents ts) are based on the Czech spelling system and have little to do with the values of Latin letters in traditional English orthography. Such forms as Cexov, Puskin, and Xrusvcev are common currency in international publications for specialists in Slavic languages and literatures but tend to arouse dismay and even indignation among general readers in the United States.

The Library of Congress System (LCS), when used in its complete form, with all its diacritical marks and ligatures, is as exact as the International Scholarly System. The trouble, though, is that the only place LCS is ever used in its complete form is in library catalogs. The deformed LCS, bereft of the diacritics and ligatures that make it make sense, is now very widely used in American scholarly publishing, including the Slavic Review and a number of university presses. Unfortunately, it has serious defects. For example, it cannot make clear whether boi, (battle), represents Boit or BoH, whether voin stands for the nominative singular of warrior, BOHH, or the genitive plural of war, BOIH; whether "znachenie religii v istorii Rossii" means "the significance of reli- gion" or "the significance of religions" (peJini'i or peJinvi') in the history of Rus- sia; whether razvitie idei means "the development of an idea" (1z4e4); or "the development of ideas" (iz4ei); and whether the transliterated title of Leskov's book Evrei v Rossii refers to "The Jew in Russia" (EBpeii) or "The Jews in Russia" (EBpeH). Since the title was given in the singular in the first edition of that book and in the plural in the second, its transliteration is not insignificant.

Is there anything we can do, at this late date in the development of Russian studies in America, to bring some order and clarity into this orthographical anarchy? The answer is a clear and urgent Yes-urgent because of the recent news that our British colleagues are now seriously considering dropping their own transliteration system and adopting our stripped-down version of LCS, and even more urgent because any failure on our part now to act at once could allow computer technology by default to force this inadequate system upon both us and the British forever.

What is the solution? It is really very simple. Even while recognizing that we must live with the stripped-down version of LCS as our basic transliteration system, we could adopt one small change that would almost completely restore its accuracy without obliging us to return to its diacritics and ligatures. This is how it would work: all we need to do is use a j in the place of all short is and all is in ligatures. In the place of at,

Slavic Review 48, no. 1 (Spring 1989)



98 Slavic Review

et, it, o, ui, yi (for Russian aii, eiH, MiM, oil, yi, EIA) we would write aj, ej, ij, oj, uj, yj. In the place of ila, lu (for Russian M, io), we would write ja, ju. This use of j as a substitute for the LCS diacritical marks would clarify all the examples given above, along with such other ambiguities as the distinction between 10, as in IOJI41I, and io, as in HLOJIB. (see table).

What can be said for and against adopting what we might call this "J-modification" of LCS? Some colleagues, accustomed to the anarchy of English spelling in general, may question whether we should bother to make transliteration from the Russian more exact. The answer to that is simple: Unless the cost is prohibitive, whatever makes communication clearer is better. Others may object that the introduction of j into LCS with a value (y- as in you) that it does not ordinarily have in English would create an artificial barrier to ready comprehension. In answer to that we might point to such un- English forms as the digraph kh and the ending -ogo in the genitive singular of mas- culine and neuter adjectives, which are already a part of LCS. Moreover, American readers are already accustomed to words in which j represents a variety of sounds-for example, Jung in German, San Jose' in Spanish, and jeu de mots in French. An added advantage of reforming LCS with the use of j is that, since j comes immediately after i in the alphabet, it would cause minimal disruption in the alphabetical order of bibli- ographies now using LCS with or without diacritics.

The substitution of j for the diacritics and ligatures in LCS would still fall short in two minor respects of providing completely accurate transliteration: without a ligature the digraph ts would fail to distinguish between u and TC, as in KOHeL and COBeTCK4H

(konets and sovetskij); and without the superscript dot of the full LC System, the e would fail to distinguish between 3 and e, as in 3Jim and eni (ale and spruce). Neither of these defects is serious. No Russian homonyms are distinguished only by the letters ii and TC. Apart from a few interjections, such as 3Ba, 3x, and 3'i, as well as 3TOT and its derivations, 3 tends to be found only in words of foreign origin, where its nonpalatal sound is almost always recognized without difficulty.1

Even with these minor blemishes, the J-modification of LCS would be a vast im- provement over what we have now. In the United States we cannot escape the Library of Congress System; but there is scarcely any justification for continuing to use its stripped-down, ambiguous variant. I offer this proposal for discussion in the hope that all scholarly journals and presses that now use LCS without the diacritical marks may be persuaded to adopt this J-modification of it.

Such a change would be easy to effect, and its advantages should be evident. Jour- nals, such as the Slavic Review, that now use LCS without diacritics for both proper names and bibliographical documentation would simply adopt the J-modification for everything. Authors and presses that now use the Popular System for proper names but LCS for documentation would presumably continue to use that dual system, adopting the J-modification only for documentation. This reform would of course be irrelevant for publications aimed at readers who know no Russian, which would simply continue to use the Popular System, and for publications now using the International Scholarly System, which have no need to improve their transliteration.

For colleagues who may wonder whether the adoption of this J-modification would lead to complications or inconsistencies in the transliteration of the other Slavic languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, I believe I can set their minds at rest. The only

1. The only serious exception to this that I know of was pointed out to me recently by Daniel Field: Does "poet poet" stand for "lOW3T noeT" or for "noeT riO3T"?



One More Look at the Problems of Transliteration 99

question arising in Ukrainian would concern the palatals 3 and i, which would be tran- scribed as je and ji, as they are also in the International Scholarly System. Serbian would not be affected, since it is customarily transliterated by using the Croatian spelling system. The only Bulgarian problem is the Xi used as a vowel, which LCS translite- rates as iu and some publications, including the Slavic Review, as a quotation mark (e.g., 6bJnrapcKHi: b"lgarski).2

Table. Examples of Transliteration Systems

LCS without Cyrillic Full LCS diacritics LCS withj

6oii bof boi boj 60H boi boi boi BOHH voin voin voin BOHIH voin voin vojn 3HameHMe znachenie znachenie znachenie

peJIHrHH religii religii religii 3HameHHe znachenie znachenie znachenie

peJIHrFH religil religii religij EBpefI B Evref v Evrei v Evrej v

PocCHH Rossii Rossii Rossii EBpeH B Evrei v Evrei v Evrei v

PocCHH Rossii Rossii Rossii IOJIrHi iulil Iulii Julij HI0JIb i-Uil iiul' ijul' maTepHani material material material FeBpwqIb fevrial' fevrial' fevrjal' HOCHFD losif losif losif paioH rafon raion rajon 3aiTH zaiti zaiti zajti 3aHrpaTb zaigrat' zaigrat' zaigrat'

2. This J-modification of LCS is by no means original with me. Over the years I have run across examples of it from time to time in the works of various presses, including Victor Erlich's Russian Formalism (The Hague: Mouton, 1955) and Renato Poggioli's The Poets of Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), both of which use it throughout; and Richard F. Gustafson's recent Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), which uses the J-modification only for Russian citations and bibliographical material but gives all proper names in the Popular System.



one more look at the problem of transliteration

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