Anyone who lives in Israel or has visited knows that many, - perhaps most, road signs are written in both Hebrew and English (and often in Arabic as
well).
The English signs, - meaning those written in Latin characters, - are not
translations of the Hebrew, but transliterations. ALTHOUGH THEY ARE
WRITTEN IN LATIN LETTERS THEY ARE STILL HEBREW.
Those who don¹t read Hebrew can¹t easily figure out how to pronounce
place names simply by reading the Latin transliterations. It¹s not easy to
guess the proper pronunciation of any foreign language.THE SAME
HAPPENS FOR TOURISTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
But signs of this sort are not intended for foreign tourists alone. Hundreds of
thousands of Israelis look at signposts and see the Latin characters first,
even if many of them know some Hebrew. Some of them are newcomers,
others veteran immigrants who came as adults and haven¹t perfected their
Hebrew, others are foreign workers or members of the diplomatic corps.
For some, Latin transliterations offer a ³moment of Hebrew² which help
non-Hebrew readers make some connection between the Hebrew and
English alphabet.
This is a a strong reason why the Latin characters of Hebrew words should
be accurately written and clearly represent the Hebrew origin.
For example, Hebrew has two letters for the ³K² sound. Certain names need
to be transliterated with a ³K² and others ³Q,² - for instance, Ksalon but
Qoranit.
Latin characters that do not identify individual Hebrew phoneme - [that is a unit
of a sound in a language] - with a unique TRANSLITERATED letter do not help
non-Hebrew readers, [and] BUT are actually confusing to those who have
some command of Hebrew.
THE ACADEMY for the Hebrew Language is now addressing the problem
of Latin transliterations of Hebrew signpost names. [We¹ve] THE
ACADEMY HAVE been under a great deal of pressure to introduce a
standard for converting Hebrew words into English. This pressure comes
from those involved with tourism and transportation. [But] IT IS VERY
STRANGE THAT the academy DOES NOT ADVOCATE [advocates instead]
converting each Hebrew phoneme into separate and different Latin letter.
Hebrew speakers know the difference between ain and aleph in writing,
even though many people pronounce them identically. For a tourist the
difference may be insignificant, but Israelis know the distinction is
essential. [Similarly, in] IN preparing a conversion of Hebrew, EACH
phoneme SHOULD GO into A separate Latin [letters] LETTER. [, the] THE
Academy should ALSO separate between tav and teit. They obviously
should be converted into distinct Latin [letter] LETTERS. Teit should be
written with a dot under it, while tav should be a simple ³t².
The main feature that the INTERNATIONAL Standard ORGANIZATION
AND THE STANDARDS Institution of Israel [and its Conversion of Scripts office
demands] DEMAND, is that it be possible to automatically reconstruct a
converted text into the original script. That is the criteria we should uphold
for our signposts.
Another principle for transliteration into Latin is that each Hebrew phoneme
should be converted into only one letter not a combination of letters. The
solution should be as with most European languages , [transliterated]
TRANLITERATION into English - employing a diacritic or accent mark
such as small line under a letter, or small ³v² above a letter.
There is a third point. ³G² and ³C² in English and many other languages have
each two pronunciations. Still, both pronunciations are written with the
same letter. Hebrew also has letters that have each two pronunciations. They
are ³Bet², ³Pay², and [³Kuf²] 'KAPH' which sometime have the phonetic value
of ³v,² ³f² and the Spanish ³x², respectively. Hebrew speakers know how to
pronounce them properly. They are essential to Hebrew [writing, but] . THUS
for signposts we suggest that a small line be added under the letter to show
the [intended] ALTERNATE pronunciation.
In the final analysis, no nation should distort the elements of its language
just for the sake of making life easier for tourists , because greater issues are
at stake.
And we have every reason to expect that no tourist will get lost if our
formulation for transliterations is adopted.
= = = = = = = =
The writer is a full member of the Academy for the Hebrew Language. He is a
Professor Emeritus of the Hebrew University
Hebrew Linguistics, and a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science in
the Technion. He was the convenor of the ISO committee of preparing the Standard
for Convertion of Hebrew Characters into Latin Characters (TC46/259/3), as part of
the ISO activities to prepare conversions for all languages that their national script is
not Latin.