Eugi Gufo's siteEugi Gufo

What is it?   The rules of transliteration   Participate in the improvement   Other transliterators

What is it?

The transliterator (also called the converter or transliter) is, as you can well imagine, a tool for transliteration, i.e. for the conversion of words written with the characters of the alphabet X into the same words written with the characters of the alphabet Y. The tool therefore performs a translation that is not linguistic but graphic: it should not be confused even with transcription (think of the phonetics found in dictionaries). This is precisely why there is more than one set of rules for transliteration from one alphabet to another. Each set of rules is drawn up by a national or international organisation to meet specific needs. More detailed and, in a certain sense, more scientific information can be found in specialist literature or Wikipedia (depending on which sources you prefer).
This transliterator, in particular, allows texts to be translated from the Kyrgyz alphabet to the Latin alphabet and vice versa. By default — unless a specific transliteration system has been chosen — this tool will follow the current official Anglo-American BGN/PCGN system. This technical choice is due to the fact that there is no universally accepted system for romanising the Kyrgyz language: I therefore decided to use as the default setting the system that the Kyrgyz Government officially adopted in 2008 for the romanisation of geographical names. The rules of transliteration – or, if you prefer, conversion – for both the default system and the explicitly chosen one are given in the section «Transliteration rules» for information purposes and for possible «manual» checking of the result obtained. It is likely, in fact, that the need will arise to make manual corrections to the result of the «reverse» transliteration, the one corresponding to the possible sequence of Kyrgyz – Latin – Kyrgyz conversions (this is the fault of some distortions due to too great differences between the alphabets treated).

Participate in the improvement

You can help me to improve my Transliterator of Kyrgyz alphabet in any of the following ways:
– write to me by e-mail about any observed error in transliteration (don’t forget to specify the system in which the error is detected);
– send me a list (or a link to it) of non-existent letter combinations in Kyrgyz (needed to improve the reverse transliteration option);
– make any suggestion (or give advice) on improving transliteration, as well as its design, usability, etc.;
– donate to me an allowable amount of money, which will help me devote some more time to further work on improving the transliteration: see the yellow button in the right-hand column of the page.