Draft transliteration scheme on the Web

[Anthony P Stone]

Dear Colleagues

Many thanks to all who contributed to the recent discussion.   It is
important that it was raised.

It is not critical that l_macr-b uses the diacritic otherwise used by
alveolars.   It is the choice of LC Tables for both Malayalam and Tamil,
hence common in library catalogs and listed as plain 'l' in their
computers.    Also, it is commonly used when transliterating S Indian
scripts in scholarly works.   Hence I shall put this in the draft standard.

LC Tables for Kannada have l_dia-b, which (like r_dia-b) makes for poor
readability.   The draft standard will have l_macr-b uniformly.

On June 18, 1998, S Palaniappan wrote: 

>> "Tamil" is a well established form in English.   One may see "Tamizh"
>> already, but there would be no real need for "Tamiz" to come in.   (The
>> standard is not going to suggest a simplified transliteration with the
>> diacritics simply omitted.    Without diacritics,  Tamil .t usually
becomes
>> t and t becomes th.   Also .s usually becomes sh and "s becomes either 
>sh or s.)
>
>But there is one context of relevance to scholars where this will happen. 
>I am talking about the computerized catalogs of libraries in US libraries 
>and possibly other countries using similar systems. . . .
> . . .
>Please note that here no diacritic marks are possible. Dental "t" is just
"t", 
>not "th". (In fact retroflex "T" will also be "t".) The l_macr-b letter is
just "l".  
>In fact, most of existing collections with titles with this letter will be
listed in 
>the catalogs like this. If, according to the new standard, they become
z_dot-b, 
>then the newer acquisitions will end up with lists showing "-z-", while
the old 
>books will have -l-. Unless, the libraries modify the software to
automatically 
>list both varieties, every time one searches for an item with this letter
in title 
>(or even author) one will have to go through twice as many steps. One has
to 
>search for items once with a title with -l- and once with -z-.  . . .
>
>Generally, life will be a lot simpler if we just continue with l_macr-b.

Regards,   Tony

Dr Anthony P. Stone, Project Leader, ISO/TC46/SC2/WG12 Transliteration of
Indic scripts.    Email: stone_catend at compuserve.com                       
     Thinking aloud on  transliteration:
   http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/translit.htm