References and Transcription

Okay, my last couple of posts have involved both references and transcriptions. So it's time to lay down the law. In this post I hope to codify the manner in which I transcribe various non-Roman orthographies (writing systems), and also the way that I provide references in my posts.

Some of you may be questioning the worth of this. I just like things to be consistent, and I also like to give enough information from books that I talk about or quote from so that my readers can follow up the texts for themselves.

In general, when referencing books, I follow the widely-used MLA style. I am tempted to use the APA style, but frankly it's six and half a dozen - the difference is minimal, but consistency is key. MLA style is as follows:

Surname, Forenames. Title. City of publication: Publisher, Year

For example:

Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. The Syntax of Romanian. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994

However, I adopt a far simpler system when referencing Baha'i texts, usually with this format:

Author, Title.

As well as a page reference, I'll usually try to include a paragraph or section number too (e.g. Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas. p34, K41).

There are several reasons for this practice. Firstly, many Baha'i texts have been published several times by different publishing houses, but the text is all the same. By simply stating which book I am talking about, and providing a page and section reference, my readers can follow up the reference in their own copy, which may be a different edition to mine.

Secondly is the issue of translation. Standard MLA would dictate that I specify the translator of the text in question. However, for the vast majority of translated Baha'i writings, there exists only one translation, which has usually been authorised by the Baha'i World Centre. As such, I will only specify the translation used when I use an unauthorised or provisional one.

Thirdly is the question of dates. Usually (although I'm not sure how widespread this practice is) when one is referencing a republication of an older book, the date of publication is listed, along with the original date of publication in brackets. For example:

Meillet, A. Les Dialectes Indo-Européens. Paris: La Société de Linguistique de Paris, 1950 [1908]

However, with the Baha'i writings this is cumbersome, partly because of the several editions published mentioned in my first point, and partly because many of the texts were not ever published in the first place. For example, Tablets of Baha'u'llah is a collection of letters Baha'u'llah wrote to various people, on various subjects, at various times in His life. So providing a date of original publication for a citation is almost impossible.

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Now that that's out the way, let's talk about transcription. Specifically of Arabic, the only language not written in the Latin (Roman) alphabet that I am vaguely competent in. Maybe in the future I'll have cause to write about Sanskrit or Chinese, but I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it - they have more or less standard transcription systems anyway (IAST and Pinyin respectively).

I use a transcription system based on the Baha'i orthography, but with a couple of changes. There are a number of factors to consider when implementing a transcription. On the one hand, there is the idea that we want a one-to-one correspondence of symbols, so we can transfer from one orthography to another with no data loss. And on the other, there is the idea that we should be transcribing not just the spelling of the word, but the actual pronunciation. This second one is important, as many languages do not have direct "phonetic" spelling systems, and many that do are governed by rules that change pronunciation in particular contexts. For example, the Russian word друг ("friend") is pronounced /druk/, but if we wished to transcribe it letter-for-letter we'd get <drug>. (Yes, the Russian word for "friend" looks like the English word for "drug". But it's pronounced like "droog", and was spelt as such in Burgess's novel Clockwork Orange.) The reason that this word is spelt with the letter usually signifying /g/ is because when we inflect the word, for instance the genitive singular друга "of the friend", then it is pronounced like /g/. So we have two options here: transcribe the word in a way that is faithful to the phonetic reality, which gives us a confusing paradigm of druk - druga; or, transcribe the word in a way that is faithful to the underlying (supposed) mental reality, which gives us the simpler paradigm of drug - druga but requires us to expect the readers be familiar with the rule which says "devoice word-final obstruents" (which is the rule that makes what is originally a /g/ be pronounced as if it were a /k/).

With that in mind, there is the reader/writer distinction. A writer will write something once to be read probably many times. The ratio should help determine what kind of transcription system to use. For example, the transcription system I outline below uses a good number of diacritics and special characters. These take a lot longer for me to type than regular letters. Were I wanting something less intense, I could use the Qalam Romanisation, which is a lot easier on the hands but harder on the eyes. It's plain ugly. I only use the Qalam romanisation in plain-text emails or instant messenger conversations, where the reader/writer ratio is relatively low. (And even then, I do my best to fully vocalise it, and I usually spell the long vowels as <uu, ii> etc rather than <uw iy>.)

Arabic presents some particular problems for transcription, especially if we wish to remain true to the original orthography. For example, a word ending in an /a/ sound can be written in 3 ways: the vowel could be unmarked (so basically not written); it could be written with a tá’ marbúṭa - ة -; or with an ’alif maqṣúra - ى -. These last two are involved in morphophonemic alterations in cases of inflection, where a /t/ appears, or the /a/ changes into an /i/. Do we transcribe these letters as different from regular plain /a/? In my post on Egypt, I transcribed the tá’ marbúṭa as <at>, but then how do we distinguish it from just an /a/ and a /t/ together with nothing to do with a tá’ marbúṭa? At the end of it all, we need to consider the purposes of this transcription. I'm not an Arabicist. I don't intend to write long posts on Arabic philology or grammar. I'm willing to accept a degree of compromise and of ambiguity. Another factor influencing my transcription choice is aesthetics. Some people like to transcribe the hamza and ‘ayn with a 7 and 3 respectively. That looks ugly. I use two different types of apostrophe, which takes a while to get used to for some people (it did for me). It looks nice though, and the number of times you'll find a word whose meaning hinges on whether a letter is a hamza or an ‘ayn is minimal.

So without further ado, here's a brief chart detailing the transcription of each letter:

Letter	Transcription
’alif ا	á
bá’ ب	b
tá’ ت	t
thá’ ث	th
jím ج	j
ḥá’ ح	ḥ
khá’ خ	kh
dál د	d
dhál ذ	dh
rá’ ر	r
zayn ز	z
sín س	s
shín ش	sh
ṣád ص	ṣ
ḍád ض	ḍ
ṭá’ ط	ṭ
ẓá’ ظ	ẓ
‘ayn ع	‘
ghayn غ	gh
fá’ ف	f
qáf ق	q
káf ك	k
lám ل	l
mím م	m
nún ن	n
há’ ه	h
wáw و	w
yá’ ى	y
hamza ء	’

The vowels I transcribe as <i, a, u, í, á, ú> (the acutes marking long vowels), and the diphthongs as <ay, aw>. The tá’ marbúṭa is transcribed with <at>, and the ’alif maqṣúra as simply <a>. This differs from the Baha'i Orthography I mentioned above in a number of ways. Firstly, digraphs are not underlined. This leads to an element of potential ambiguity, but makes the transcription easier to read, write, and copy from. It uses <w> and not <v> for the letter wáw.

A number of notable points concern the definite article al-. I transcribe this consistently as al-, even when preceding a "sun" letter - so al-shams, al-núr etc rather than ash-shams, an-núr. Also, when the vowel of al- disappears due to a preceding vowel, this elision will be marked with an apostrophe. This is how we get the name ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’, which in some other transcription systems is ‘Abd al-Bahá’ (or even 3abd al-bahaa7). Again, this causes a little ambiguity, but I feel it is minimal, and is is consistent with the Baha'i Orthography system. Where possible, I eliminate the inconsistencies noted in Winters (1997) and Momen, both cited below. One inconsistency I don't deal with is that of the lack of inflection from nominative case ending in names like ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’: Winters (1997) reckons that it should inflect for the accusative and genitive cases (rather than being frozen in form), making ‘Abda’l-Bahá’ and ‘Abdi’l-Bahá’ respectively. However, to treat foreign words as English words and inflect them thusly is quite normal for English. This is why we speak of "paninis" (despite panini already being plural in Italian). This kind of attitude would likewise require us to say saunassa instead of "in the sauna" (because sauna is a Finnish word, right, so it should be inflected for the inessive case, surely?). While commendable for wishing to preserve the original linguistic integrity of the word(s), this kind of approach ultimately only acts as impediment to communication. Which is why I keep this "inconsistency" in my transcription system.

Finally, when using common terms such as "Baha'i", "Baha'u'llah" and so on, I will leave off the diacritics and only use simple apostrophes (rather than right- or left-leaning ones), simply for the sake of convenience.

Momen, Moojan. Transliteration. http://www.northill.demon.co.uk/relstud/transliteration.htm

Winters, Jonah. Dying for God: Martyrdom in the Shii and Babi Religions. Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1997 (available online)