Verbum Tip 2d: Transliterated terms
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Personal Names special considerations: enter in original language
Transliteration
From Verbum Help:
[quote]To type Greek, first type g: and then type a transliteration of the word, for example type g:logos and select λόγος from the drop-down suggestion list. The transliterated input has now transformed using the language’s native alphabet. To type Hebrew or Aramaic, start with h: and a: respectively.
For more details about typing Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic using transliteration, see untransliteration.[1]
Untransliteration
Untransliteration is a Verbum-coined word that refers to the reversal of that process, that is, mapping transliterated user input such as g:logos back to a list of candidate original language words (λόγος). Untransliteration is what Verbum does behind the scenes when a user enters a transliteration in a search query, etc.
• g:logizomai untransliterates to the Greek word for "considering."
• h:elohim untransliterates to the Hebrew word for "God."
• a:melek untransliterates to the Aramaic word for "king," among other things.
See also Transliteration.[2]
Transliteration
Transliteration is spelling a word from one language with the closest corresponding letters of another. For example, the word λόγος can be transliterated in English as logos. Many dictionaries and commentaries use transliteration instead of the original languages for the sake of readers unfamiliar with the Greek or Hebrew alphabets.
Greek Transliteration
Type the characters on the left to match against the characters on the right:
• a – α
• av – αυ
• af – αυ
• b – β μπ
• c – χ
• ch – χ
• d – δ
• e – ε η ι
• ev – ευ
• ef – ευ
• f – φ
• g – γ
• h – η rough breathing
• i – ε η ι
• iv – ηυ
• if – ηυ
• j – iota subscript ι
• k – κ
• l – λ
• m – μ
• n – ν
• ng – γγ
• nx – γξ
• nch – γχ
• o – ο ω
• ou – ου
• p – π
• ph – φ
• ps – ψ
• q – θ
• r – ρ
• rh – ρ
• s – σ ς
• t – τ
• th – θ
• u – υ ου
• v – β ς
• w – ω
• x – ξ χ
• y – υ ψ
• z – ζ
• \ – grave accent
• / – acute accent
• = – circumflex accent
• ] – smooth breathing
• [ – rough breathing
Hebrew and Aramaic Transliteration
Transliterating Hebrew and Aramaic is especially difficult because those languages are phonetically different from English.
Also, there are multiple approaches to transliterating Hebrew and Aramaic into Roman characters. Some schemes ignore alef and ayin altogether, others use apostrophes for both, others use right quote for one and left quotes for the other, and still others use a half-ring facing left for one and a half-ring facing right for the other. Vowels are sometimes ignored, sometimes not. Dagesh lene sometimes results in doubling letters in transliteration, and sometimes not.
Note: Verbum transliteration rules are flexible, and each word can result in multiple matches.
Type the character(s) on the left to match against the characters on the right:
• a – א ע nothing
• b – ב
• bb – ב
• bh – ב
• ch – ח
• d – ד
• dd – ד
• dh – ד
• e – א י ע nothing
• ê – י nothing
• f – ט פ
• ff – ט פ
• g – ג
• gg – ג
• gh – ג
• ḥ – ח
• h – ה ח
• hh – ה ח
• i – י א ע אי עי nothing
• î – י
• j – י
• jj – י
• k – כ
• kk – כ
• kh – כ ח
• l – ל
• ll – ל
• m – מ
• mm – מ
• n – נ
• nn – נ
• o – ו א ע nothing
• p – פ
• pp – פ
• ph – פ
• q – ק
• qq – ק
• r – ר
• rr – ר
• s – ס שׁ שׂ
• ss – ס שׁ שׂ
• ṣ – צ
• š – שׁ
• sh – שׁ
• ssh – שׁ
• t – ט ת
• tt – ט ת
• ṭ – ט
• th – ת
• ts – צ
• tz – צ
• u – ו א ע או עו nothing
• v – ב ו
• vv – ב ו
• w – ו
• ww – ו
• y – י
• yy – י
• z – ז
• zz – ז
• ’ – א ע
• \ – ע
• $ – שׁ
• & – שׂ
• # – ש
• ) – א
• ( – ע
• + – ט
• , – Atnach (ב֑)
• < – Atnach (ב֑)
• . – Dagesh (בּ)
• > – Dagesh (בּ)
• - – Makef (־)
• ] – Sin Dot (שׂ)
• [ – Shin Dot (שׁ)
• ` – ע
Use the following conventions to untransliterate Hebrew words:
• Typing i at the beginning of the string causes Verbum to test both i and yi to catch cases where h:israel could be h:yisrael.
• Typing a, e, i, o, or u at the beginning of the string causes Verbum to add ’ since there is probably an alef or ayin in the Hebrew.
• ai is really a way of writing ay
• aa becomes a’a for cases such as h:baal which should be h:ba’al
• ee becomes e’e
• ae becomes a’e
• ea becomes e’a
• Leaving a or e at the end of the input also checks for ah or eh because of silent heh.
• Leaving e or i at the end also checks for ey or iy to account for plene spellings.
• Leaving o or u at the end also checks for ow or uw to account for plene spellings.
• Putting ch at the end also checks for k at the end, because final kaf is also sometimes transliterated that way.
See also Untransliteration.[3]
- Type “h:” to indicate you are typing transliterated Hebrew.
- Select the correct entry from the dropdown menu (shaded line).
- Type “g:” to indicate you are typing transliterated Greek.
- Select the correct entry from the dropdown menu (shaded line).
Reverse Interlinear
One source of the transliterated text is from the Reverse Interlinear.
In the interlinear, I am displaying the Hebrew (1) and the transliteration (2).
In the interlinear, I am displaying the Greek (1) and the transliteration (2).
Program settings
From Verbum Help on Program Settings:
[quote]Transliteration Format
Transliteration is the practice of spelling foreign language words in one writing system using the symbols or letters of another. It is common practice in biblical studies, for example, to designate the Greek word λόγος with the romanized spelling logos.
Certain areas of the Verbum user interface automatically transliterate Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac text. For each language, there are different methods of transliteration, each with their own level of precision and their own approach to representing the unique phonetics of each language.
The following transliteration schemes are supported for Greek:
• SBL Greek (default) — the transliteration scheme used by the Society for Biblical Literature, as outlined in their publication guidelines, The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd Edition.
• Beta Code — a plain-text encoding of biblical Greek developed by David W. Packard in the late 1970s and adopted by Thesaurus Linguae Graecae project in 1981. See Wikipedia: Beta Code for more details.
• Spanish — a modification of the SBL Greek style with phonetic variants more familiar to Spanish speakers.
The supported transliteration schemes for Hebrew include:
• Scientific (default) — a Verbum scheme that aims to preserve virtually all phonetic and orthographic information in a Hebrew word. It should be possible to read a transliterated string in this format and have a very good guess about the exact spelling of the Hebrew word that generated it.
• SBL Academic — one transliteration format used by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), suitable for academic or technical publications where fine distinctions of Hebrew consonants and vowels is necessary.
• SBL Academic with Spirantization — same as the previous style, but preserving the distinction in pronunciation between hard and soft Begadkefat letters.
• SBL General — another transliteration format defined by the SBL style guide, suitable for general audiences.
• SBL General with Glottal Stops — same as the previous style, but with a leftward half-ring to represent Hebrew ‘ayin (ע) and a rightward half-ring to represent Hebrew ’alef (א), which are omitted in the official SBL General style.
• Simplified — a Verbum scheme for general or popular-level audiences that has no diacritic marks. This is close to the transliteration scheme employed by Strong’s lexicons.
And the transliteration schemes for Syriac are:
• Hugoye (default) — as defined by the submissions guidelines of the Hugoye journal published by the Beth Mardutho Syriac Institute.
• ASCII — plain-text representation of the Hugoye scheme, suitable for email and internet message boards.[4]
One can control what rules of transliteration are used in your installation.
Setup:
- Open Application Menu (1)
- Select Program Settings (2)
The options are offered as a dropdown menu. Except for scholars, leaving the default values unchanged is common practice.
Interactive
Verbum provides an interactive tool to transliterate text for you. Text Converter. 2014. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.
Setup: Library à Type:Interactive à Text Converter
Instructions for use are available under Help on the left side of the panel toolbar.
- Enter text to transliterate in the text box (1).
- In the transliterations (2), choose the scheme you need and use the Copy option to copy and paste to the location of choice.
[1] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).
[2] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).
[3] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).
[4] Verbum Help (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2018).
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