Transliteration field

I've been thinking about something, and it's probably mostly because I'm a language nerd, but that is that it would be great with a new field that would be placed between the Lettering and the Translation field. That field is Transliteration.

Take for example this coin:
The lettering is: البنك المركزي الجزائري ,20, سنتيما ,
The translation is: Central Bank of Algeria, Twenty Centimes
But how do I read the lettering out loud?

What do you think? Would you like to know how to read the non-Latin based alphabets written on the coins?

I respect your idea. To me that sounds way too complex and unnecessary to add on Numista.

Citeer: "apuking"​I respect your idea. To me that sounds way too complex and unnecessary to add on Numista

​Same. Okay idea, but definitely not in the scope of Numista. You can always put it in Google Translate.

Citeer: "nthn"​

Citeer: "apuking"​I respect your idea. To me that sounds way too complex and unnecessary to add on Numista

​​Same. Okay idea, but definitely not in the scope of Numista. You can always put it in Google Translate.

​I hear you, but thinking like this I can't help to see the translation field as equally unnecessary. You can just put the phrase in Google Translate and get an idea what it says. But, Google Translate does not transliterate all languages.

The reason for this field, in my view, isn't an aid in pronunciation.

 

The reason is that the lettering fields are being used for transliteration. Those texts don't belong there, and it is awkward to put them in the description field. A separate field would let all the fields be used as intended and consistently.

Numista is not a language website, also many old scripts were used by different dialects or even languages that would have pronounced the same text widely different. IMO a translation of a text should be sufficient.

So what do we do with the existing transliterations? Delete them? Move them to Description? Leave them in the wrong field?

The most non destructive way is to move them to the comment sections.

You can hear the sentence spoken by a woman with ImTranslator   v.17.15

CREPOSUC

You can hear the sentence spoken by a woman with ImTranslator   v.17.15

Um, no thanks. I've never heard a good AI “person” pronounce anything but American evern remotely accurate.

Transliteration is a big can of worms. For instance, for romanization of Arabic, there are two ISO standards, two UN standards (according to the target language) and many scholars prefer other schemes. In certain cases, transliterations can even gain political overtones (e.g. Mandarin Chinese romanization in PR China vs Taiwan). By the way, do we transliterate old coins with the old or new official standards?

 

Except if you're talking about IPA phonetic transcription, that's an even bigger can of worms, very contentious for written text and too complicated for refereeing.

leopiccionia

Transliteration is a big can of worms. For instance, for romanization of Arabic, there are two ISO standards, two UN standards (according to the target language) and many scholars prefer other schemes. In certain cases, transliterations can even gain political overtones (e.g. Mandarin Chinese romanization in PR China vs Taiwan). By the way, do we transliterate old coins with the old or new official standards?

 

Except if you're talking about IPA phonetic transcription, that's an even bigger can of worms, very contentious for written text and too complicated for refereeing.

The can of worms is being ignored in many places in Numista – contributors are submitting transliterations. Debating a transliteration standard won't help stop contributors from transliterating into Lettering fields and/or description fields, and won't stop referees from approving the transliterations.

 

N#93094 

N#310863 

N#64342 

N#479132 

N#302858 

(I searched for “shah” in lettering and selected a few from the many with non-Latin scripts.)