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Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
(1975)
A Note on Transliteration and Nomenclature, pp. xvii-xx
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Page xvii
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND NOMENCLATURE One of the obvious problems to be solved by the editors of such a work as this, intended both for general readers and for scholars in many different disciplines, is how to render the names of persons and places, and a few other terms, originating in languages and scripts unfamiliar to the English-speaking reader and, indeed, to most read ers whose native languages are European. In the present volume, and presumably in the entire work, these comprise principally Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Armenian, none of which was normally written in our Latin alphabet until its adoption by Turkey in 1928. The analogous problem of Byzantine Greek names and terms has been handled by using the familiar Latin equivalents, Anglicized Greek, or, occasionally, Greek type, as has seemed appropriate in each instance, but a broader approach is desirable for the other languages under consideration. The somewhat contradictory criteria applied are ease of recogni tion and readability on the one hand and scientific accuracy and consistency on the other. It has proved possible to reconcile these, and to standardize the great variety of forms in which identical names have been submitted to us by different contributors, through constant consultation with specialists in each language, research in the sources, and adherence to systems conforming to the require ments of each language. Of these, Arabic presents the fewest difficulties, since the script in which it is written is admirably suited to the classical language. The basic system used, with minor variants, by all English-speaking schol ars was restudied and found entirely satisfactory, with the slight modifications noted. The chief alternative system, in which every Arabic consonant is represented by a single Latin character (t for th, h for kh, d for dh, s for sh, g for gh) was rejected for several reasons, needless proliferation of diacritical marks to bother the eye and xvii
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