Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!vmenkov@cs.indiana.edu
From: "Vladimir Menkov" <vmenkov@cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Transliterations
Message-ID: <1995Feb12.215744.22887@news.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
References: <D3CKEC.4qp@indirect.com> <3h967p$926@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <1995Feb8.141823.40975@bsuvc.bsu.edu> <FURUFURU.95Feb10231319@kongming.ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 21:57:40 -0500
Lines: 42

In article <FURUFURU.95Feb10231319@kongming.ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>,
Furue Ryo <furufuru@ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:

>I wonder why the Russians do not make for themselves a standard of Roman
>transliteration.  Or is it just that the Russians did make a standard
>but you don't use it?

Of course we developed a standard. And then another standard. And then
one more. And so on :-)

Some time ago I happened to read a collection of articles by Shcherba
({\v S}{\v c}erba), a Russian Soviet linguist, who worked in the first
half of this century. Among the articles, a few were polemical ones,
and were obviously related to a discussion raging in the 1930's about
the transliteration standard to be adopted.

{\v S}{\v c}erba, a Slavist (among other things), advocated a
transliteration system making use of haceks and other diacritics,
which would make transliterated Russian look somewhat like West
Slavic languages (e.g. Czech or Sorbian a.k.a. Vendic).  His system,
with some changes, seems to have been adapted by the Academy
of Science, and it is also used internationally by linguists
transliterating Russian words.

However, other government agencies seemed to stick to their own, quite
different, standards. E.g. the post office and the foreign office
seemed to favor a French-based transliteration system (obviously,
an 18-19c. tradition); other agencies (regulating international trade,
etc.) seemed to use yet other standards. Some of these standards seemed
to change with time due to probably political reasons (French-,
German-, or English-oriented). One of Shcherba's articles contained
a table of such standards, and it was a pretty large table!

Finally (oh, "cultural imperialism!" :-) :-) people writing for
English-language technical journals seem to use BAST (British-
American Standard Transliteration, as enforced e.g. by Plenum Press);
and those working for Western mass media are using the ugly,
disgusting system favored by American and British newspapers.

And now you say: "No standards!" :-)

	--Vld.
