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b-hebrew - RE: Transliteration Schemes

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Transliteration Schemes
  • Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 18:24:54 -0500


>===== 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





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