Transliteration

Transliteration is the process of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way, such as converting Greek text Βιβλος to Roman text Biblos.

Transliteration at DP

Since 19 May, 2020, Distributed Proofreaders (DP) has used UTF-8 for project text, and most projects that have Greek in them now use transcription, but some Project Managers may ask for transliteration, if there are only a small number of words in Greek.

There are threads dedicated to asking for and giving help with Greek in both the General DP forum and Post-processing DP forum. Also available for reference are the Greek Alphabet Wiki page, and Project Gutenberg's Greek How-To for assistance. An external Greek transliterator tool can also be used to facilitate this.

While text passages written in Hebrew and other languages will usually also require transliteration, proofers are generally not expected to transliterate these languages in the rounds, though they may do so if they feel comfortable doing it. Project Managers will leave instructions in the Project Comments on how to mark up page areas needing transliteration, which the Post-Processor will take care of later, usually with the assistance of DP volunteers with the needed specific language skills.

Transliteration is a painstaking and time-consuming procedure and is only done for relatively small passages in works at DP. If a majority or significant portion of a project's text is written in characters we do not process in the rounds, it may be best to process part or all of that text elsewhere.