Guía para transliterar griego

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Revisando griego

La herramienta de transliteración de griego

Si usted se encuentra con texto en griego mientras está revisando una página, debería intentar la transliteración del fragmento. Esto implica convertir cada carácter del alfabeto griego a las letras equivalentes del conjunto Latin-1 (A-Z) para producir algo que puede leerse de manera parecida al texto original en griego. Existe una herramienta para transliterar griego en la interfaz de revisión para simplificar esta tarea.

Oprima el botón "Greek Transliterator" localizado al final de la interfaz de revisión para acceder a esta herramienta. En la herramienta, haga click en los caracteres griegos que son semejantes a los que aparecen en la palabra o frase que está transliterando. Los caracteres latinos apropiados aparecerán en el cuadro de texto inferior. Cuando haya finalizado, simplemente copie y pegue este texto transliterado en la página que está revisando. Rodee el texto texto transliterado con el marcador para griego. Por ejemplo, Ἀχιλλεύς se convierte en [Greek: Achilleus].

Si la herramienta de transliteración no aparece cuando usted hace click en el botón, su ordenador/computador puede estar bloqueando la apertura de la ventana (pop-ups). Aségurese de que su navegador permite ventanas emergentes del sitio DP. Alternativamente, refiérase a la tabla de más abajo para indentificar y transliterar las letras. Si al hacer click en uno de los caracteres griegos se genera una signo de pregunta "?" en la herramienta de transliteración, asegúrese que su navegador está configurado para mostrar el conjunto de caracteres Western European (ISO-8859-1) y no Unicode (UTF-8). Esta opción puede encontrarse bajo la opción "Ver" en su navegador.

Herramienta de transliteración/transcripción alternativa

Esta herramienta puede obtenerse en Greek 4 (o alternativamente en Greek 0). Esta herramienta provee tanto de transliteración para el uso en las rondas de revisión como transcripción para el uso en post-procesamiento. Para comodidad del usuario, ambas páginas son completamente seguras y pueden descargarse al computador/ordenador personal. Estas herramientas están diseñadas para forzar al usuario a utilizar correctamente los signos diacríticos; por favor revise la imagen minuciosamente para asegurarse de que usted ha indentificado correctamente la selección de signos diacríticos. (Acerque la imagen tanto como sea necesario para hacer legibles los signos diacríticos.) Si necesita instrucciones para saber cómo utilizarlo, puede enviar un mensaje a Tony Browne (en inglés) o revisar Transcribing Greek (en inglés).

El alfabeto griego

Estas son las formas normales de las letras griegas.

La última columna muestra las letras en línea con alfa. La posición de una letra es igual de importante que su forma. En español, usted nunca se confundiría una "l" con una "j", sin importar qué tan deteriorado esté el scan, porque una va sobre la línea y la otra va debajo de la línea. Además, usted puede diferenciar letras en mayúsculas o minúsculas por su tamaño relativo. Lo mismo aplica al Griego.

	Mayúscula		Minúscula		Combined
Nombre	Imagen	Transliteración	Imagen	Transliteración	Imagen
alfa		A		a
beta		B		b
gamma		G		g [1]
delta		D		d
épsilon		E		e
dseta		Z		z
eta		Ê		ê
theta		Th		th
iota		I		i
kappa		K		k
lambda		L		l
mu		M		m
nu		N		n
xi		X		x
ómicron		O		o
pi		P		p
rho		R		r
sigma		S	[2]	s
tau		T		t
úpsilon		U		u, y [3]
phi		Ph		ph
khi		Ch		ch
psi		Ps		ps
omega		Ô		ô

Si encuentra una letra que no se parece a ninguna de las anteriores, vea debajo las secciones "Variantes" y "Ligaturas".

Sigma

La forma σ solo se utiliza al medio o al comienzo de una palabra, nunca al final. La forma ς es utilizada solamente al final de una palabra. Si usted se encuentra con esta segunda forma al comienzo o al medio de una palabra, vea la sección de Letras doble más abajo.

Letras con múltiples transliteraciones

Las letras γ (gamma) y υ (ípsilon) pueden ser transliteradas de diferentes maneras, dependiendo del contexto.

Gamma

La letra γ (gamma) es usualmente transliterada como g, pero a veces se utiliza la n cuando aparece antes de ciertas letras:

Griego	Transliteración
γγ	ng
γκ	nk
γξ	nx
γχ	nch

Úpsilon

La letra υ (úpsilon) puede ser transliterada como u o como y. Generalmente, si úpsilon viene después de una otra vocal, se utiliza "u". En otros casos, se utiliza "y". (Si usted puede reconocer diptongos: utilice "u" en los diptongos, "y" en los otros casos.) Sin embargo, esto no es requerido. Usted puede utilizar u en todas partes si así lo desea, pero verifique este hecho con el Gestor del Proyecto (Project Manager) para asegurarse que la transliteración ha sido realizada consistentemente en todo el proyecto.

Letras mayúscula

Vea cuántas letras mayúsculas en griego se parecen a sus equivalentes romanas:

A, B, E, Z, I, K, L, M, N, O, T, Y.

Se puede saber casi siempre si se trata de Griego a través del contexto.

Algunas otras letras se parecen a sus propias formas en minúscula:

Theta			En algunas fuentes, la letra theta mayúscula tiene una barra flotando en el medio. En otras, aprece como una theta minúscula más redonda y gruesa.
Phi			Algunas fuentes tienen una letra fi minúscual desproporcionadamente grande que parece una leta mayúscula. Si ese es el caso, usted debe asumir que es una minúscula.
Khi			En el caso de las últimas tres letras dobles del alfabeto (fi, ji y psi), la principal diferencia entre la mayúscula y la minúscula es la posición con respecto a la línea: encima o debajo.
Psi

En estos ejemplos, usted puede apreciar otra diferencia común: en las tipografías griegas, las letras mayúsculas suelen tener trazos terminales (serif), mientras que las letras minúscula raramente los poseen.

Cuidado con:

H		Eta	Ê no H
P		Rho	Rh o RH no P
X		Khi	Ch o CH no X

Signos diacríticos

Seguramente usted conoce los signos diacríticos, aunque quizás no sabe que así se denominan. Los signos diacríticos son cualquier cosa que se añade a la letra "principal" como un acento é o una cedilla ç. El alfabeto griego tiene cuatro tipos básicos de signos diacríticos:

Ejemplo	Imagen	Nombre	Se encuentra en
ἁ ἀ		espíritu áspero o espíritu suave	vocal inicial o diptongo, y la mayoría de las ρ (rho, r).
ϋ		diéresis	raro: υ (úpsilon u) o ι (iota i) después de otra vocal
ᾳ		iota suscrita	solo junto con α (alpha a), η (eta ê), ω (omega ô)
ὰ ά ᾶ		acento	cualquier vocal o diptongo

¡Cuidado! Los diptongos griegos (dos vocales seguidas) son siempre tratados como grupo, de manera tal que cuando usted encuentre dos vocales juntas (αι, αυ, ει, ευ, οι, ου; ηυ & υι), el signo diacrítico aparecerá en la segunda vocal, pero la h para un espíritu áspero irá antes de la primer vocal en la transliteración. (Si se encuentra con αυι, ευι, ουι o ηυι; el primer par de letras es el diptongo y la ι está aparte.)

Una sola vocal puede llevar hasta tres signos diacríticos: espíritu áspero/suave y acento y iota suscrita. Si una letra tiene un acento y un espíritu, el acento estará arriba o a la derecha del espíritu. Usted se puede encontrar con la palabra

transliterada como [Greek: hô].

<Cuidado: en las fuentes cuando se utiliza la forma circunfleja de este acento, esto puede ser difícil de distinguir de la phi simple φ.> De manera similar, la diéresis puede aparecer combinada con un acento; el acento aparecerá entonces posicionado arriba de la diéresis.

Espíritu suave y espíritu áspero

The “breathing mark” is the Greek way of writing the letter h. The two forms are

“rough breathing” (curls to the right, like a C: )

“smooth breathing“ (curls to the left, like a comma: )

Except for ῥ (rho r) you will normally only see a breathing mark at the beginning of a word.

Smooth Breathing

In transliteration, ignore all smooth breathing. It means “This word does not begin with an h sound”, so there is nothing to add.

Rough Breathing on Vowels

Transliterate rough breathing as h before the letter, with these exceptions:

• If the word begins with a diphthong, the breathing mark will appear over the second vowel, but the h for rough breathing goes at the very beginning of the word. If your transliteration has something like ohu (h between two vowels), you have made a mistake.
• Exception to the exception: a word printed in all capitals will often have the breathing printed at the beginning even if it starts with a diphthong.
• If a word begins with a capitalized vowel, the accents and breathing marks are often printed to the left of the letter, rather than above it. If it has rough breathing, make the vowel lower case and capitalize the H: hÊraklês becomes Hêraklês.

In Greek, as in English, there are plenty of word pairs where the only difference is the initial h sound. For example, these two words:

would be proofread as [Greek: hodous] and [Greek: odous], respectively.

Rough Breathing on Rho

If a word begins with rho, it always has rough breathing, with the rho transliterated as "rh". Note that the "h" goes after the rho, rather than before as with vowels. English words like “rhyme“ and “rhombus” may help you remember this rule.

Double rho in the middle of a word always has rough breathing on the second rho, so διαρροια should be transliterated as diarrhoia. Do this even if the breathing mark is omitted in the printed text.

Dieresis

This is the same diacritic you see in English words such as “coöperate“ or “reënter”. It means that two letters you would normally treat as a diphthong (in English, more often a “long” vowel) should be read as two separate syllables.

You are not required to transliterate dieresis. But the characters ü and ï are in the Latin-1 character set, and will never conflict with anything else in the transliteration, so you may as well include it.

Iota Subscript

This is simply the letter ι (iota i) tucked under a long vowel (alpha, eta, omega).

In general, iota subscript is ignored in transliteration.

Some proofers enjoy hunting down iota subscript and including it in their transliteration as plain i. If you want to do this, get the Project Manager’s permission. Conversely, ask the Project Manager what to do about iota subscripts added in earlier rounds.

Accent

Greek uses the same accents you see in modern European languages such as French: acute á, grave à and circumflex â. In most Greek fonts, the circumflex looks more like a tilde than the usual “hat” form, but it really is a circumflex.

Unless the Project Comments say otherwise, ignore all accents.

“Keep Everything”

In some projects, the Project Comments will explicitly ask for all accents to be preserved. The system most often used at DP is a hybrid of our ordinary transliteration scheme and Beta code; see Marking Accents for details.

An Example

In this Greek phrase:

there are rough breathing marks in the first and fourth words. The letter "h" is added to the start of those words, and all other diacritics are ignored. This phrase would be transliterated:

[Greek: hoti tôn physei hê polis esti, kai]

For the Terminally Inquisitive

With rare exceptions, each Greek word contains exactly one accent, and it will be on one of the last three syllables. (There are a few very rare exceptions to this.) The grave and acute accent are really the same thing, so you will never see a grave accent in mid-word.

The form ῥ (rh-) is not an orthographic quirk; it reflects the history of the language. Almost all Greek words in ρ started out as sr- which eventually morphed into hr- and then rh-.

Iota subscript originated for obscure historical reasons. Some modern texts have reverted to putting it inline--αι, ηι, ωι instead of ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ--but you will never see this in DP-vintage books.

Punctuation

Punctuation marks in Greek get transliterated right along with the letters. Two of them are exactly the same as in English: the period and the comma. Note that Greek doesn't automatically put a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, though names are usually capitalized.

Two other punctuation marks are different from English: the question mark, and the medium stop. A Greek question mark looks like a semicolon ";" Transliterate it as a question mark "?". The medium stop is a single raised dot, much like the familiar mid-dot · It is transliterated as an English semicolon ";" unless you happen to know that a colon ":" is more appropriate.

Apostrophes

The apostrophes at the ends of some words are, in fact, apostrophes, and serve the same purpose that they do in English: The author is leavin' some letters off the ends o' words. Please include the apostrophes in your transliteration. Keep the space between words. These are not contractions.

Apostrophes are also used to indicate numerals. If your transliteration seems unpronounceable and the "word" ends with an apostrophe, you're probably dealing with numerals (for example, rk' = 120, siê' = 218). Refer to Wikipedia's article on Greek numerals. Please proof them as they appear on the page, not as the corresponding number.

Question mark or semicolon?

If you meet a ; at the end of a Greek passage, how can you tell if it's a Greek question mark or an English semicolon? Well, sometimes you can't. But your best guide is the surrounding English (or at least non-Greek) text. If it's a new sentence, the ; was a question mark and goes inside the [Greek: ] tags. If the text carries on from mid-sentence, the ; was a semicolon and belongs with the English.

Inside or Outside?

If a bit of Greek ends with a period, does it go inside or outside the markup? Use the same guidelines as for formatting: if the passage is a full sentence, or if it's an abbreviated word, put the period inside the [Greek: ] tags. You may think you can't possibly tell if a Greek word is an abbreviation, but most of them are names of texts, so they will be followed by numbers. If it says something like

Hesiod, Ἀσπ. 574

it's an abbreviation, and becomes [Greek: Asp.] 574. Another common one is

κτλ.

which is Greek for etc.--period and all.

Common errors

• Putting an 'h' before every letter with an accent, instead of just those with rough breathing. See Diacritical Marks above for how to tell them apart.

• Confusion between kappa (κ) and chi (χ). They both often look like an x. Chi is larger, and both of its "legs" always drop down below the line. Kappa is usually much smaller, and only drops below the line in older texts, where its right leg may curl under the next one or two letters.

• Misreadings between nu (ν), omicron (ο), alpha (α), and upsilon (υ). Nu has a sharp point at the bottom, while upsilon is rounded. Upsilon may be nearly closed at the top, but there should be a little gap, while omicron is a full circle. When the top of the alpha is missing (due to imperfect printing, etc.) it can be distinguished from the upsilon by its lower-right tail; also, the alpha usually has a flat line on the right and a curve on the left, the upsilon is the reverse.

• Confusing a breathing mark with an acute or grave accent. Breathing marks are curved; the accents are straight.

• Omitted punctuation. In focusing your attention on the letters, it's easy not to notice that there are also punctuation marks in the Greek text. This happens most often with a period or comma at the end of the Greek text. Check to be sure that all the punctuation is present in and around your transliterations.

Tips

• Greek words can only end with a vowel, or with nu (ν), sigma (ς) or rho (ρ). Careful! "Sigma" includes the compound letters psi (p+s=ψ) and xi (k+s=ξ). There are a few exceptions but they only apply to some very short words that you'll get used to seeing. An apostrophe means there was a vowel, but it's hiding, so all bets are off.
• If a word ends in th' or ch' or ph' (θ, χ, φ with apostrophe) the next word will almost always have rough breathing.
• If your transliteration is unpronounceable, check to see whether you've made a mistake. It might also be numerals, which end with an apostrophe. Refer to Wikipedia's article on Greek numerals.

Latin is Your Friend

Some Greek words made their way into classical Latin, and many more Greek words were used to make technical, scientific and medical Latin. When you have the Latin, you can often figure out what the Greek ought to be. Details and examples are on the Latin is Your Friend sub-page.

Freebies

• You will never see a word starting with [u] or [y] (upsilon υ with smooth breathing). Unless the text leads you to expect mention of pickle jars [urchê].
• There is no such word as [os] (ος with smooth breathing).
• There is no such word as [chata] (χατα with a chi), or [chai] (χαι ditto).
• If the one-letter word ω (ᾧ) has iota subscript, it's got rough breathing. If it doesn't (ὦ), it's got smooth breathing.
• You will never see the word [ôs] (ως with smooth breathing). Unless the text leads you to expect the Doric dialectal word for "ear".

Older and Obscure Items

If Greek makes you unhappy, stop right here. DP expects you to handle basic Greek with the help of the transliteration tools and Greek How-To. You don't have to struggle with the whole Greek spectrum, from unusual letterforms to cryptic ligatures to decorative-but-illegible squiggles. A simple [**indecipherable Greek] and a post to the project thread will do. But if you want to delve deeper, read on.

Two Double Letters

This form of sigma: ς normally only occurs at the end of a word. If you meet one in the middle of a word, it's almost always a letter called "stigma" and the top bit of it usually extends further to the right: ϛ. It gets transliterated as st.

This letter is a shorthand way of writing ou. Think of it as υ (upsilon) balanced on top of ο (omicron).

Variant Forms

If you see a letter that looks like a capital C in a Greek word, it's another form of capital sigma, called the lunate sigma. Usually it is treated just like the regular sigma Σ, transliterated as S.

Here are some other common variant forms. Each one is shown between alphas so you can see where the letter goes in relation to the overall line:

Image	Letter	Transliteration
	beta	b
	gamma	g
	kappa	k
	pi	p
	rho	r
	tau	t

Ligatures

Please do not attempt to transliterate the ligatures discussed here unless you are very familiar with the Greek alphabet, and know enough of the language to recognize basic inflectional endings, prepositions and conjunctions. Otherwise, the time you spend will be out of all proportion to your chances of getting it right. Look at them, admire how pretty they are, and then post to the appropriate Greek Help thread.

In older books, printed Greek used a lot of ligatures. These are groups of letters joined together or abbreviated, rather than being written separately. Two of the most common ones, the double letters mentioned above, lasted until well into the 19th century, so you will meet them in almost all Greek texts.

Ligatures originated with scribal (hand-written) Greek as a way of abbreviating common letter sequences. Latin did the same thing. But unlike Latin, which got rid of almost all its abbreviations soon after printing was developed, Greek held on to the ligatures until the 18th century. This page contains many of them, and an even more thorough set is available on these two pages: page 1 and page 2.

Some examples (hyphenated to show where in a word you are likely to find them):

Image	Greek Letters	Transliteration
	καὶ	kai
	-ος	-os
	-ρο-	-ro-

Helpful Links

• Marking Accents: how to proof Greek accents, if the Project Comments instruct you to include them
• Project Gutenberg's Greek How-To
• Ask for help or check your transliterations in the Greek Help thread in the General forum.
• The Greek Help thread in the Post-Processing forum is seen by the same people and will get you the same answers. This is also the place to bring Post-Processing-specific questions like how to handle Greek in html.
• Greek Glyph Chart (Greek numbers, and older forms of the letters)
• A Copious Greek Grammar (1832 text on Google books with PDF download option)
• Wikipedia's article on Greek numerals
• Script Teacher: a site for learning various alphabets and fonts, including Greek. None of the transliteration options are identical to what we use at DP, but the closest one is the second option (a b e ē).

Formatting Greek

Inline Format

Greek fonts characteristically appear slanted. But they are not italic, so they don't need <i>italic</i> markup. Conversely, if a Greek word comes in the middle of an italicized passage, you do not need to close and re-open the markup around the word. Just assume the Greek matches the surrounding text.

Some books use gesperrt (spaced-out) type for emphasis within Greek passages. Mark it as <g>gesperrt</g> in the usual way.

In rare cases, books use two different Greek fonts. One will be unambiguously boldface; the other will be normal weight and probably slanted. The Project Comments should warn you. In general, mark the heavy one as <b>bold</b> and use no markup for the other one.

When you do need to use inline markup with Greek, it is best to put it outside the [Greek: ] tags, or the final text will seem to say <β>βιβλος</β>. But if this would involve a lot of extra [Greek: ] tags, the Project Comments may tell you to ignore this suggestion.

Line Breaks

Many Greek quotations are poetry, or verse drama. There may be widely varying line lengths and indentations, and you will rarely have initial capital letters as a clue. Some line-end hyphens are intentional. If you are not absolutely certain about line breaks, ask.

Notas

• Traducido de esta página de la Wiki de DP, con la ayuda de esta página de Wikipedia.