TRANSLITERATION

Transliteration has as its first purpose to render text written in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet accurately into a standard Latin form. Uniformity is essential.

In all formal entries of names and titles, KIMBALL FILES ("KFiles") [ID] employ the Library of Congress system of transliteration with one notable and consistent deviation = Capital “Ю" and “Я” are transliterated “Yu” and “Ya”, rather than "Iu" and "Ia" (unless absolute replication of a quoted source is required). For the most part, formal transliteration of titles and formal names is otherwise according to the standard Library of Congress system.

KFiles is also filled with extended quotations from Russian texts. Here the essential need for uniformity is not met. Transcriptions of Russian-language narrative are frequently rendered into the Latin alphabet according to a system of transliteration unique to KFiles.

To help you cope with this, here is a three-column table = (1) Cyrillic alphabet (CYR), (2) the Library of Congress system of transliteration (LCo), and (3) the KFiles system. The most unexpected KFiles deviations from standard norms of transliteration are flagged with "*"  =

If Kfiles transliteration were used, we would discover the following variations from Library of Congress standards, some of them quite jarring, but others actually more compatible with the English readers expectations =

Comparing Library of Congress with KFiles, there are gains and losses. In the short list just above KFiles transliterations used about 20% fewer letters. In the extended KIMBALL FILES, with thousands of pages of data, that adds up. However, the results trouble the experienced eye at first.

Several letters are found at opposite ends of the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, EG= "Ф" and "F", “Ч” and "Ch", “Х” and "Kh", "Ю" and "Iu", "Я" and "Ia". You instantly see that the Library of Congress sends the late-appearing Cyrillic letters to the front of the Latin alphabet.

“Q” renders the sound “Ch” in certain KFiles texts, and that is consistent with standard practice in transliteration from the Chinese.
“X” renders “Kh”. This is an elegant and plausible Latin rendition which significantly aids in alphabetization. Furthermore, it liberates "X" from the huge alpha-range “K”, while Library of Congress interfiles all words beginning with "Kh" with those beginning with "K". KFiles places "X" words toward the end of the alphabet where they belong.

There is something natural about "Q" and "X", but KFiles throws itself on the mercy of the court with respect to “W” for “Ш” (rendering the short "sh" sound) and “Ww”  for “Щ”(rendering the subtly extended "sh" or "shch" sound). It can be said that these KFiles transliterations look a bit like their Cyrillic counter-parts and rest together in proper order, W-words followed immediately by Ww-words, near the end of the alphabet where they belong. Furthermore, "W" and "Ww", rather than "Sh" and "Shch", liberate those Cyrillic letters from the huge "S" range where the Library of Congress hides them..

Just about everyone instinctively prefers "Yu" and "Ya" over "Iu" and "Ya" for "Ю" and "Я", and that preference puts these letters more properly toward the end of the alpha-order (though, it reverses them). I’m always ready with some glee to point out to the Library of Congress itself that it is inconsistent. EG= Ryazan' (rather than Riazan') is the standard Library of Congress rendition of that famous town РЯЗAHЬ.

Some problems appear insoluble. Those who have spent hours working back and forth between English and Russian alphabetized lists appreciate the problem of the frequent Cyrillic letter “B” [V] and the identical but less numerous "З" [Z].  The Cyrillic letter "B" occupies third position in that alphabet. The Latin letter "V" occupies twenty-second position. When KFiles makes "Ц" into "C", it shifts that letter from the bottom of the Cyrillic alphabet to the top range of the Latin, though it does liberate it from the huge "T" range where it languishes as "Ts" in the Library of Congress.

KFiles playfulness with transliteration has dignified precedence. For example, in the 1980s the New York Public Library computerized catalog used “w” for "Ь" (softsign), “C” (irregularly) for “Ч”, and “X” for “X”.

NYP, and others, capitalize both letters when a Cyrillic capital is rendered by two Latin letters. For example, Я=YA rather than Ya, Щ=SHCH rather than Shch. KFiles does not follow that practice.

Regularly presses and journals insist on variations. Nearly everyone has ceased to distinguish between the old discarded letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and their post-1918 substitutes. This means that older publications separate the old “ye” from the new, standard “e” (pronounced the same = "ye"), but newer publications do not. And you cannot tell from any but the most punctilious transliteration systems which “e” you are dealing with. Nearly all are happy to drop the terminal hard sign, obligatory in the old orthography at the end of every word that terminated in a consonant, but dropped in the early Soviet period of revolutionary change. The absence of a practical transliteration that would distinguish "И" (long I) from "Й" (short I) has meant that most are content to transliterate both with the simple Latin iota..

We must transliterate in order to accommodate the reader who does not have Russian and the print mechanisms that cannot or publishers who will not produce Cyrillic fonts. Another sound reason to transliterate is to make words universally searchable with the powerful FIND function [ID]. An Electronic page that includes both the Cyrillic spelling XACБYЛATOB and the Latin transliteration Khasbulatov is not universally searchable in one swoop.

Considerations of pronunciation and general usability conflict with precise substitution of distinct Latin characters for Cyrillic characters. It is not easy to transliterate the distinct qualities of "Э" (pronounced "eh") and "ё" ("e" with an umlaut, pronounced "yo"), and to distinguished them from their close relative "e" (pronounced "ye").

Then there is finally the problem of names. Lev Tolstoi wrote his name in the Latin alphabet thusly = "Leo Tolstoy". That's how we write it in all but the most precisely governed settings. Yet the notorious government figure Dmitrii Tolstoi must have his name, the very same family name born by Leo, spelled with the "i" at the end. And there is the ubiquitous male name and masculine adjective ending "-skii" which is nearly everywhere in English rendered "-sky". And then there is the egregious "Tchaikovsky" [ЧAЙKOBCKИЙ].

Given names are a tangled mess. Here are some common given names, properly transliterated and followed by English equivalents.
Aleksandr = Alexander
Andrei = Andrew
Evgenyi = Eugene
Konstantin = Constantine
Lev = Leo or Leon
Mikhail = Michael
Nikolai = Nicholas
Pavel = Paul
Petr (pronounced Pyotr) = Peter

It is the practice of SAC and KFiles to write given names in proper transliteration, but a regular exception is made for royal names which are rendered in the standard English manner. EG= Ekaterina II is rendered Catherine II.