Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian

Romanization of его

Can we please change the rule for Г(г) to clarify that (contrary to what I have found in several WP articles) его is pronounced yevo, never yego? It has been too many decades since I took an elementary Russian class for me to want to write the rule, but IIRC it applies not only to его, but to a lot of related words, as well. Peter Chastain ^[¡hablá!] 03:48, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

While I agree with your sentiment, I'm not aware of any transliteration that makes an exception for words like его, so it would be original research. 162.208.168.92 (talk) 20:12, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

You can pronounce whatever you want: book-stylish with shapened noticeable "г", or casualy – without it. Because this morning this lanuage wasn't about phonetical terrorism of foreign speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.242.2.80 (talk) 18:32, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

While Г(г) in many places is pronounced as a hard G (Грозный = Groznyy), there are many words where it has the sound of v or h. сегодня = sevodnya, not segodnya. Петерго́ф = Peterhof, not Petergof. Гамлет = Hamlet, not Gamlet. It jars every time I read a bad translation in Wikipedia. (I understand that Wikipedia is following BDN/PCGN, but if the intent is to give an accurate transliteration, garbling the word's pronounciation doesn't achieve this.) 73.189.125.249 (talk) 00:40, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Both «Петерго́ф = Peterhof» and «Гамлет = Hamlet» are against modern literary Russian. Perhaps, you are implying southern dialects or pidgins like surzhik. Tacit Murky (talk) 16:27, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Transliteration of the written word is not transcription of pronunciation. For the latter, see Help:IPA/Russian.  —Michael Z. 18:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Pre-reform spellings

Hi - do we have rules for transliterating pre-reform spellings? It's sometimes used as an affectation in modern works, particularly in the linguistics community. I was citing an article called Законъ Иткіна in the journal Труды Института русского языка им. В.В. Виноградова from 2014, and was unsure of the best way to go about transliterating the title in the reference. My inclination is that we should ignore hard signs at the end of words, but to otherwise follow ISO 9 (making this example Zakon Itkìna). Theknightwho (talk) 15:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

For transcribing bibliographic information, we should be consistent with libraries and most published sources, and use ALA-LC romanization for Russian, which includes the old letters.[1]  —Michael Z. 18:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Full ALA-LC would romanize it Zakonʺ Itkīna, or Zakon Itkina if we drop the diacritics as some publications do. Might make sense to use the first if referencing publications, but the latter if using the name in the text of an article.  —Michael Z. 01:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Mzajac, when writing the titles of pre-1917 sources, should we be updating the form to modern Russian or keep it in the original form? I was recently asked this on my talk page. Cheers, – Olympian ^loquere 03:28, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

When mentioning them in the text I think fancy characters should be dropped for consistency with everything else, so the question is almost moot. For example, the yat ě (ѣ) becomes e which often reproduces modern spelling e (е), and the hard sign (ъ) is dropped anyway so inconsistency disappears. For cases where it still makes a difference, I can’t think of any guideline that helps decide. Either serves just as well to identify a work’s title. I would tend to keep it simple for the reader and stick with modern conventions.

For citing sources, in my opinion it’s more important to romanize the original spelling to identify them unambiguously. We can use full ALA-LC to be consistent with library cataloguing, or use modified ALA-LC as most publications do in their notes and bibliographies. Depends how hard you want to try, I think, and if we choose the simpler of those options the usage is more likely to remain consistent within and among different Wikipedia articles.  —Michael Z. 16:34, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

It's important to remember that there are some modern publications which intentionally use pre-reform spellings (e.g. the article I mention at the top of the thread), so it's not a universal rule that modernising the spelling will help in keeping the text uniquely identifiable. Seems like an area where common sense should generally prevail. Theknightwho (talk) 16:59, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

That’s true in all areas. Agreeing on a consistent general approach is also helpful in all areas.

Certainly any name that self-consciously uses non-standard orthography is a special case to consider, whether it’s pre-reform Russian, capitalization like iPhone, or e. e. cummings, or something else.  —Michael Z. 17:16, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for both of your responses!​ Best, – Olympian ^loquere 03:53, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

"-iia" vs. "-iya" for Russian "-ия"

Please weigh in Talk:Korenizatsiia#Requested_move_21_August_2023. - Altenmann >talk 22:18, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Romanization of sources

Should the sources' author(s), location(s) and publisher(s) be romanized for the sake of making it easier for people who can't read Cyrillic text? As an example, Месхидзе 1998 would be Meskhidze 1998. WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 19:56, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

You mean in references in Wikipedia articles? Yes, romanizing the author’s name would follow common practice in English-language referencing. For title, chapter, work, and some other parameters you can enter, for example:

• script-title= Красный голод: Сталинская война в Украине
• title= Krasnyĭ golod: Stalinskai͡a voĭna v Ukraine
• trans-title= Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

See {{citation}} and related template docs for the details.  —Michael Z. 02:38, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Sure, "Romanization" from the word Română. Unreadable, unprintable and unsearchable. Strongly disagree. - Altenmann >talk 04:27, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Romanize is from the seventeenth century, derived from Roman which is inherited from Old English.

It’s readable, searchable, and printable on my computer and phone. Are you on a TRS-80?

Anyway, maybe we should drop the diacritics as most books and academic articles do in their citations:

• Krasnyi golod: Stalinskaia voina v Ukraine

 —Michael Z. 18:35, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Română was an irony about lots of diacritics. I sure know the term.

Search: when I google search "stalinskai͡a", it gives me 13 hits of "stalinskai͡a". When I search "stalinskaia" google also suggests "stalinskaya" and gives thousands of hits. From that I conclude that when google sees lost of diacritics it turns on exact match. - Altenmann >talk 19:08, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

What has google web search results on one romanized word to do with how reliable sources romanize Russian-language references and what we should do about it?  —Michael Z. 20:43, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

It has to do with my objections to fancy romanizations I stated at the beginning of this chat thread and they have to with the convenience of usage by Wikpedia readers. Just like IPA renderings, they are of use only for experts. AFAIU the main goal of romanizations is to provide searchability for users who want to read about the subject in English sources. And keywords such as "stalinskai͡a" effectively defeat this purpose. - Altenmann >talk 22:05, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Citing sources for the convenience of readers means readers can find the sources. Never mind the fancy diacritics; just drop them. Using ALA-LC without diacritics in citations serves that purpose well.[2] Using something else does not.[3] (And the diacritics do work if you copy-paste them.)[4]  —Michael Z. 03:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Whilst I agree in principle with romanising the title, it's my understanding that WP:RUS is preferred for all cases of Russian romanisation on Wikipedia. Since it's an essay, perhaps you could initiate a move towards a more systematic and academic romanisation system rather than the ipso facto one English Wikipedia uses. – Olympian ^loquere 04:59, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

In fact WP:RUS is based on BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian. Most notable difference is avoiding diacritics. Aslo WP:RUS contains some clumsy decisions (imo), such as Синий = Siny; Великий = Veliky, creating confusion with Y (y) used for Ы (ы) and Й (й), leading to Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy vs. Russian ironclad Petr Veliky. IMO WP:RUS is nearly good to go as a guideline after some updates/discussion, based on experience. Also, IMO there must be distinction in rules for (faithful) transliteration of Russian phrases and Russian proper names, which can be used as article titles/search keywords. Indeed, I can find "Suyk-Su" using Google but not BGN/PCGN version "Su·yk-Su" . Also, Sovetskai͡a (by LOC system) looks weird compared to Sovetskaya, etc. - Altenmann >talk 05:39, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed WP:RUS is based off BGN/PCGN, though the special rules (or clumsy decisions as you termed them) as well as the omission of diacritics make WP:RUS unique and inconsistent with official romanisation systems. Whilst omitting diacritics may be okay for ease of reading, I'm of the view that those arbitrary rules should be stricken for the sake of consistency. – Olympian ^loquere 07:52, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, at least on one point we agree. Since you have a proposal, why don't you open a WP:RFC on this? - Altenmann >talk 18:46, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of general romanization and WP:RUS, references should probably use LOC (ALA-LC) romanization either with or without diacritics, for titles of works, authors, etc. The former is used in practically all English-language libraries, and the latter in citations and bibliographies in most English-language books and academic papers.  —Michael Z. 18:27, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

H-m-m, while I can agree about libraries, books and papers are rather chaotic in this respect, at least in my area of interests. - Altenmann >talk 19:08, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I find that surprising. I can’t think of a serious history book I’ve referred to that doesn’t use ALA-LC. Some of my books at hand with Russian, and flipping to the first pages of notes:

• Plokhy 2023, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, Norton. ALA-LC dropping the tie bars but retaining ï=ї, э=ė, ъ=”, ь=’, but not й=ĭ. For example, p 305:
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ I reformy, . . . “Obrashchenie k sovetskim grazhdanam. Vystuplenie po televideniiu prezidenta SSSR.”
• Yekelchyk 2020, Ukraine: What everyone needs to know, Oxford University Press. ALA-LC dropping all special characters. For example, p 187:
  • Andrei Illarionov, “Putin schitaet, chto chast Ukrainy dolzhna prinadlezhat Rossii,” Ukrainskaia Pravda.
• Yekelchyk 2007, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, Oxford University Press. “Note on Transliteration,” p xiii, and p 229, 231:
  • In this book, Ukrainian place and personal names are transliterated using the simplified Library of Congress system with soft signs, apostrophes, and diacritical marks omitted throughout.The masculine ending “-yi” is shortened to “-y,” and initial rotated vowels are rendered with “y” rather than “i.”
  • Istoriia Ukrainskoi RSR
  • P. P. Tolochko, Kochevye narody stepei i Kievskaia Rus
• Wilson 2002, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, Yale University Press. “Preface,” p xiv, and p 337:
  • To make things easier for the reader I have used an adapted Library of Congress system for transliteration, keeping diacritical marks and distinctive lettering (Pochaïv not Pochaiv), but ignoring soft signs (therefore Khmelnytskyi not Khmel’tyts’kyi and Viacheslav not V”iacheslav), although I have kept them in the footnotes for reference purposes.
  • Igor’ Froianov, Kievskaia Rus’
• Magocsi 1996, A History of Ukraine: The Land and its People, University of Toronto Press. “Preface,” p viii:
  • Transliteration from languages using the Cyrillic alphabet follow the Library of Congress System
• Subtelny 1988, Ukraine: A History, University of Toronto Press. ALA-LC dropping specials. E.g., pp 573–74:
  • Arkheologiia Ukrainskoi RSR
  • “Zapiska o drevenem iazike Russkom,” Izvestiia otd. russkogo iazika i slov. Akad. Nauk

 —Michael Z. 00:53, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

In your examples there are no weird diacritics I was talking about, and without them translit looks defective. "iazika" - really? - Altenmann >talk 01:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, really.[5] ALA-LC romanization for Russian is used for cataloguing by every English-language library in the world. So it is used in bibliographies and academic citations.

What kind of sources have you found to be “chaotic” in their use of romanization?  —Michael Z. 03:06, 7 September 2023 (UTC)