Reverse Transliterations ....

[pwyzlic]

On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

> Caukhamba Samskrta Siriza Aphisa (Series Office),
> Gita/Niranayasagara/Bharati Presa (Press),
[...]
> Di Sankara Hal enda Sankara Institiut aph Philasaphi enda Kalcar
> (The Sankara Hall and Sankara Institute of Philosophy and Culture)
>
> Shouldn't Western libraries think of ways to identify English words
> written in Indian scripts, and rewrite them in standard English
> spelling? An exception needs to be made only in the case of Akademi
> (as in Sangeet Natak Akademi).

I don't see harm in it. One of the main principles of book
cataloging is -- as I understand it -- to represent the titlepage
as it is and not what should be there. If the title is printed in
Indian characters it makes sense to reproduce them in Roman
transliteration and in a standardized way. With "aphisa" and
"presa" and the like, though it might look funny at first sight.

Of course the names of publishers or the series are not essential
parts of the title like the author or the title of the work
itself. But I think it breaks the principle of making a uniform
transliteration of the title when changing "incorrect" to
"correct" forms. You will never know where to begin and where to
end.

\bye
Peter

--
Peter Wyzlic                                    pwyzlic at pwyz.rhein.de