Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From AL Cantley <acantley AT meer.net> =====
>Ken (or others),
>
>I am just learning Hebrew and need some help; regarding transliteration
>schemes:
>
>1) Where can I find the b-Hebrew scheme referred to below;

at the bottom of http://www.ibiblio.org/bhebrew/
>
>2) What are the most popular schemes;

Think of two possible objectives in transliterating Hebrew--one is so that a 
person can read with minimal effort and pronounce the words easily; the other 
is so that a person can derive from the transliteration as precisely as 
possible how the text would read in Hebrew script. (This whole thing is a pet 
issue of mine, so please bear with me, as I provide more answer than you 
probably wanted.) Think also of the reasons a person might want to 
transliterate:

1) for the benefit of readers who do not know Hebrew at all.
2) for the benefit of readers who speak but do not read Hebrew.
3) for the benefit of readers who read Hebrew but do not know the script.
4) because of technical restrictions that prevent the use of the script.

There might be more possible scenarios, but these are probably enough to get 
us started. The first category might apply to novelty use. Some people like 
to 
be able to throw around a word or phrase in a foreign language for whatever 
reason. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might be that a technical term 
in Hebrew is best discussed without trying to provide a conclusive 
translation. But it's a motive with fairly limited applicability. Since this 
sort of reader can't work directly with the Hebrew text, the 
pronunciation-focused objective probably applies best.

The second category is probably not terribly large, since I suspect just 
about 
anyone who's a fluent speaker of any Hebrew dialect can probably read it (and 
if we're talking about illiterates, there's no point providing them with a 
transcription). This might apply in a limited sense to those who have picked 
up some Hebrew by casual contact or by following along in a synagogue 
service. 
For this group as well, I would think that a pronunciation-focused objective 
makes the most sense.

The third category also seems rather restricted, since we would have to be 
talking about someone who has learned to read Hebrew from transliteration 
only. One scenario I can think of that approximates this category is a 
trained 
linguist who sits down and studies the language but never bothers to learn 
the 
script. For this sort of person, the IPA transcription system should be the 
standard, and there's no reason to go inventing a new system. Another 
scenario 
is a Semitist trained in other languages with other scripts, who dabbles in 
Hebrew without learning Aramaic square script. For this person, a system that 
identifies clearly the consonants, and to a lesser extent the vowels, is 
probably more helpful than one that provides quick and easy pronunciation. 
Arguably, we could write this person off as too lazy to trouble with, but 
that 
doesn't seem to be the usual response of publishers.

The fourth category used to be an issue in publishing, but now that 
publication works from digital files, the cost that used to be involved with 
printing non-Latin fonts has been significantly reduced. It should no longer 
be an excuse. Where it remains an issue is in e-mail, since there is not yet 
a 
universal convention for producing non-Latin fonts. It is hoped that Unicode 
will remedy this situation, but we still have some time to wait before 
everyone is on a system that fully supports Unicode and all the fonts we need 
are freely available. In the meantime, the need is still present to come up 
with some sort of transliteration system that can replace as precisely as 
possible an actual Hebrew text. Well, maybe. Consider the similar issue of 
pronunciation systems. Because there are multiple pronunciation systems 
(chiefly the somewhat flattened system popular among Western scholars and the 
pronunciation used for Israeli Hebrew, but also reconstructed Masoretic), and 
because some people who work in the field are never taught to become all that 
proficient at using any of them, it is necessary to assume that listeners 
will 
have access to a printed text from which they can read. On e-forums we tend 
to 
make the same assumptions when we transliterate. Yes, there are recommended 
standards, but generally the easiest option is that the reader open up a 
Hebrew text and read it in the appropriate script.

OK, having said all that, here's my take on the issue. There is a rather 
widely accepted standard of transcription that you can find published in the 
SBL Handbook of Style or by the CBA at

http://cba.cua.edu/cbq07.htm and
http://cba.cua.edu/cbq08.htm

The objective here is to provide as accurate and reversible record as 
possible 
of the actual consonants and vowels in the Hebrew text, while also being 
moderately readable. In this respect, it is somewhat less mechanical (and a 
good deal more aesthetically pleasing, I think) than the system recommended 
here on the list, but it is not available for our use because of the special 
diacritics required. On the other hand, it is more precise than what the SBL 
Handbook calls the general-purpose system, which basically just tries to give 
each sound as pronounced in Hebrew its best Latin equivalent. The standard 
system does have its drawbacks, however. It is not completely reversible, 
since it occasionally uses the same sign to represent more than one possible 
combination in the Hebrew script (e-circumflex, for instance, at the end of a 
word, can represent tsere-yod, tsere-he, or segol-he). It is also not as 
readable as it could be, since it represents the so-called shva mobile but 
doesn't normally represent fricative begadkefat consonants. Basically, any 
transcription system that strives for precision is in some sense doomed from 
the start because of the way the biblical text formed. Because the consonants 
and the vowels are not a perfect fit with each other, it is difficult to 
produce a system that can account for everything in the text.

Still, the standard system is a standard, and you should at least know it. 
You 
will still find it used in scholarly articles and books, and if you ever try 
to get published yourself, you may very well find that you have to use it. 
Personally, I prefer to use the general-purpose system for most functions. 
(Comparative situations, where I'm dealing with more than one Semitic 
language, would be one exception.) For anyone who uses Israeli pronunciation, 
it's very easy to read and rather intuitive to produce; and if anyone uses a 
different pronunciation and finds the convention to be a struggle, they can 
always turn to the passage in a printed text, which is what they would 
probably do in most cases, even if I did use the more precise system on this 
list.

Of course, the best answer, whenever it is available, is that people learn 
the 
scripts necessary for the work they want to do. But it does seem like we're 
still stuck with transliteration, at least for a while.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics