Romanised or Cyrillic?

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Senior Member
<a href="/en/translator/linerva" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1068713">Linerva <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Joined: 26.09.2010
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Hi all.

So far, when I've uploaded lyrics, I've uploaded them in romanised form, but I was wondering, are there any rules here regarding this?

I chose romanised form (though this actually meant writing them out again myself) because I assumed that people who look at lyrics translation sites may well not read Cyrillic, or at least not well enough to make it easy to read the songs. I really value romanisations of songs in other languages myself, as it can help you elucidate what you're hearing, not just what it technically means.

But I can also appreciate that some people prefer to have the 'original' version to read. And that if wants to learn a language (another way in which these kinds of sites are useful) then one really has to come to terms with it in its raw form.

I notice that some people upload Cyrillic only, and some both, one below the other. I didn't know that was allowed, so this is a kind of informal survey: would anyone prefer having both romanised and Cyrillic versions of the lyrics put up? Are there any rules against this?

Edited to add: I upload Macedonian songs, but this of course could have implications for other languages written in Cyrillic.

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<a href="/en/translator/ma%C3%ABlstrom" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1054906">maëlstrom </a>
Joined: 16.02.2010

Hi,
Well, technically there's no defined rule about it. You're allowed to add lyrics in romanized characters as well as cyrillic letters and even both in the same time, as you've already noticed. In my opinion, what is important is, other users can also use the original lyrics to translate them into other languages if they wish, without needing to search another text on the Internet. If I'm not wrong, cyrillic letters can be faithfully transcribed/translitterated in Latin alphabet at nearly 100%, hence I personally consider it okay to upload a transcription. However it is different when it comes to other types of writing such as Chinese characters, as Latin letters cannot be sufficient to keep the text's original meaning.
To put it in a nutshell, I think there's no problem with cyrillic lyrics' romanizations :)
Let's wait to know whether the others agree. Hope this helps.

Retired Moderator
<a href="/en/translator/ma%C3%ABlstrom" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1054906">maëlstrom </a>
Joined: 16.02.2010

................ Well, phonetic accents can certainly not be sufficient to transcribe Chinese characters because there are still several possibilities. And even when you know the meaning of a transcribed character, what about homonyms and variants? For example, : how can you know if it is 'he' or 'she' without knowing if it is 他 or 她? Or like in Japanese, all those homonymous verbs, slightly different depending on what character you choose. Although it is not always a problem for anglophones since English can seldom render these nuances, it can be useful for speakers of other languages. Therefore I strongly disagree on Chinese transcriptions/translitterations.

Senior Member
<a href="/en/translator/linerva" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1068713">Linerva <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Joined: 26.09.2010

@ maëlstrom: Thanks for clarifying the rules. I think it looks like it's very much a case of taking it language by language. I think I might add in the Cyrillic as an extra at the bottom, but since romanisation is widely used, and easier for non-Slavic speakers to relate to, it makes more sense to focus on that.

The South Slavic languages can be read pretty phonetically providing you can learn some 'interesting' pronunciations. Croatian, for example, officially uses an extended Latin alphabet as its official script. And languages who officially favour Cyrillic such as Macedonian and Serbian have official romanisations that are either officially acceptable or heavily used by native speakers for convenience (for example, a lot of internet correspondence is in romanised script, and perfectly intelligible to other speakers). I do find it interesting that in general Russian seems to be transliterated quite a bit less than the South Slavic languages. I wonder how much is due to availability of Cyrillic keyboards and better coding for Cyrillic, and how much due to historical influences on the separate languages and their respective peculiarities with regards to pronunciation (such as you've highlighted)...

However, even for a fairly phonetic language, romanisation isn't perfect. Somewhat irritatingly for someone who likes their transliterations neat, the same letter may be transliterated differently by different people. For example, жолта чаша (a yellow drinking glass) can be traditionally written as 'žolta čaša' or the latest official 'zholta chasha'. Some even do away with the diacritic marks all together and simply write 'zolta casa', trusting that the reader knows what they mean. I prefer the old-fashioned ž approach because for me it reflects 'one grapheme per phoneme' nature of the Macedonian language: representing sounds by combinations of letters like ch and sh doesn't fit. And any poor English speaker will have to learn to pronounce so many letters differently, that I doubt the familiarity of the odd 'ch' will make it any easier! And given that cursive script is quite different to the standard Cyrillic script and even a newer italicised form of Cyrillic that is something in between, two forms of romanisation seem to be an extra hassle in a language already brimming with ways in which to write the same thing!

@Lumekuninganna: Thank you for clearing something up for me. I had assumed Slavic languages in general to be quite phonetic, but whenever I listened to Russian music or the odd bit of dialogue, Os were turning into As etc! I was surprised that anyone would transliterate "мой" as "moj", but I guess it makes sense to Scandinavians and South slavs (though I'm guessing most of us don't need a transliteration). I'll keep that in mind when looking at Russian in the future :)

I can't comment on Chinese, but I do love to have romaji transliterations of Japanese lyrics. Although romaji can be related to katakana and hiragana (though no doubt not perfectly), I'm in no doubt they're not very useful when it comes to knowing what the kanji are, and without that the meaning may well be hard to figure out. So I would never suggest romaji instead of kanji, especially since they would probably be unintelligible to a Japanese speaker with no background in English, which is plausible if unlikely. But romaji are a nice addition for people who like to know what sounds they are actually hearing when they listen to music but can't read kanji :)

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<a href="/en/translator/ma%C3%ABlstrom" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1054906">maëlstrom </a>
Joined: 16.02.2010

Thank you for your reply. Actually I'm ill today so I won't be able to type something up to the length of your post, but regardless I just want to tell you I totally agree with you.

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<a href="/en/translator/linerva" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1068713">Linerva <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Joined: 26.09.2010

I'm sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better soon :)

Retired Moderator
<a href="/en/translator/ma%C3%ABlstrom" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1054906">maëlstrom </a>
Joined: 16.02.2010

Thank you both for your kind words and yes, Lume, that was right :P

Senior Member
<a href="/en/translator/linerva" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1068713">Linerva <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Joined: 26.09.2010

I agree, stylistic bugs in romaji aside, once you know a bit about what Japanese sounds like, romaji gives you a pretty good impression of what to expect. Translating from romaji is fail, though. I know a pretty good online romaji to english dictionary online, for example (good if all you have is romaji), but it's obviously weakened by the fact each word can easily have 5 completely different meanings, so it's not even good enough for a 'this is vaguely what it means' translation job without a lot of guesswork.

I can't really speak for the whole of Eastern Europe LOL but I guess even Cyrillic-writing countries know that, realistically, the Latin alphabet is important if you're going to have any contact with the outside world. Learning English second language is now even more common (and perhaps important due to the internet etc) and easier than it was, say 30 years ago, but even then the Latin alphabet was essential, if only because people needed to master it to learn other European languages at school. Also, apparently the official Yugoslavian keyboard layout was Latin-based*. I think the old Serbo-Coat dictionary I have lying around somewhere is probably in Latin script as well... Not to mention that even today not everyone has the luxury of a cyrillic keyboard in their language, or even just has access to one. QWERTY user that I am, I tend to the Latin characters myself when writing email etc. out of laziness and knowing that it's all legible anyway. Not that I would accuse other Cyrillic-writers to be as lazy as myself ;)

I know what you mean about education systems- It's hard not to envy other countries when they learn languages to such a high level as standard. It amuses me that us native English speakers can get so complacent about learning even one language, whilst the rest of the world kicks our ass in English. Out of all the teachers at school, the one who corrected students' grammar and spelling and taught them the importance of clear communication... was Russian. And didn't even teach English. LOL

Interestingly, apparently letters like ž are borrowed from the Czech alphabet. Yeah, it is rather hard to work transliteration in order to make it easiest for the person reading. Though my opinion is that, if they've got the video/song in front of them, they can match the sounds up themselves and figure out how to pronounce it. I'm amazed when I see the odd person with no Slavic language experience on youtube covering a song, and covering it quite well, simply by looking at the lyrics and listening. Music can be a really powerful tool for learning language :)

Lumekuninganna a écrit :

So I guess, in the end, there can never be a perfect system of transliteration. Laughing out loud Style, culture, and knowledge all factor into what should be a very simple thing!

Exactly. And that's where people like the lovely folks here come in! Because even if Google Translate was very accurate (hard to imagine, given that the same word might have different meanings based on context etc), it would still be missing something, the knowledge of how one culture would relate to the other, not just merely how one word relates to the other. When translating songs between cultures, there's more to get across than just literally what it means, especially when there often isn't a literal equivalent for one culture's lived experience.

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<a href="/en/translator/maygoloco" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1040248">MayGoLoco </a>
Joined: 19.05.2008

I think it's ok if you post both cyrillic and latin in one post underneath each other, and not seperate.
Because if you add them seperatly the songs will get mixed up (cyrillic titles end up at the bottom of the list of lyrics on the artist's page).
Or maybe you could add the song in cyrillic and then add the latin as a translation (macedonian-macedonian).

Senior Member
<a href="/en/translator/linerva" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1068713">Linerva <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Joined: 26.09.2010

I rather like the idea of putting them one after the other in the same post, perhaps some weird idea of post economy on my part. ;)