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Transliteration of Ancient Greek into English


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A reference of the Greek transliteration conventions we use would be this commit from me: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/16666

Since then, the Seleucids were completed, so there could be a new commit in that fashion. But I still haven't gotten around writing a comprehensive document for transliteration for all the ancient languages in the game :( I had started it then, but sadly didn't go further than this commit.

On 1/3/2019 at 10:14 PM, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

also, the 'successor' Greeks should rather have a 'Basileion' building instead of an 'Agora' - where do I suggest adjustments of actual names? help?

Are you comfortable enough with software to propose patches?

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The purpose of transliteration is to be precise.

  • Transliteration has to be a bijection:
    • if Ζεύς is transliterated Zeús, then υ has to be an u everywhere else as well, and not an y
    • if e and o represent ε and ο, then η and ω shouldn't be written as e and o (ē/ê/ę and ō/ô/ǫ are fine)
  • Accents matter: ὧς and ὡς (Hom ὥς) are two different words
  • Be consistent: φ, χ, θ are the aspirated versions of π, κ, τ, so if κ is transliterated c, then χ ought to be ch, and if κ is transcribed k, then χ ought to be kh
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3 hours ago, Itms said:

I agree with you Nescio, except on the υ bullet point: ευ is not ε+υ, it is a single grapheme. So deciding to transliterate this grapheme into eu while transliterating the grapheme υ into y would be possible. Same thing for αυ, ου, ει, etc.

Not exactly true. A grapheme is the smallest possible unit in a writing system, e.g. a word in a logographic system, a syllable in a syllabary, and a letter in an alphabet (e.g. Greek).

αυ /au̯/ and ευ /eu̯/ were diphthongs (“double sound”), a single syllable consisting of two vowels pronounced together (cf. “cowboy” /ˈkaʊˌbɔɪ/); in contrast, ει /eː/ and ου /oː/ had become monophthongs (“single sound”) in Classical Greek (cf. “voodoo” /ˈvuːduː/). However, none of these has a single character, all are written by two separate letters, thus two graphemes. In contrast, ᾳ, ῃ, and ῳ (initially diphthongs, later monophthongs) are single graphemes (as are e.g. å, æ=ä, ø=ö, and ü).

Although pronunciation matters for one type of transcription (how to convert sounds into signs), it is unimportant for the other type (how to convert one writing system into another).

Edited by Nescio
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Anyway, for the transliteration of Greek, we should discuss and decide upon the following points:

  • Do we want to distinguish between ᾰ, ῐ, ῠ and ᾱ, ῑ, ῡ? (Dictionaries do, text editions don't.)
  • What to do with the iota subscriptum (ὑπογεγραμμένη): ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ? E.g. Θρᾴκη (Thrace)
  • As for the transliteration of η, ω:
    • classicists prefer not to transliterate Greek, because they assume everyone can read it fluently
    • linguists prefer ę, ǫ
    • historians prefer ê, ô
    • Wikipedia prefers ē, ō
  • As for the transliteration of υ and ευ, either u and eu, or y and ey
    • in German and Latin, y represents a sound similar to Greek υ, but u is quite different
    • in English and French, u represents a sound similar to Greek υ, but y is quite different
  • ρ: r or rh?
  • ξ → x, ψ → ps?
  • β, π, φ → b, p, ph; γ, κ, χ →g, k, kh; δ, τ, θ → d, t, th; no objections?

Personally I'd recommend ę/ǫ for η/ω, because ê/ô causes problems with accents, and ē/ō suggests η/ω were simply longer versions of ε/ο, which is not true for Classical Greek, while ę/ǫ makes it clear they're different sounds. Also, I think transcriibing ρ as simply r is fine.

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2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'm no linguist, but for readability I think it would be best to leave out all of the accents and stuff. So, instead of Hoplítēs Athēnaîos (or whatever it's supposed to be), we have Hoplites Athenaios (Athenian Hoplite). 

Unlike in English accents can have a very important role in other languages so I would rather remove the least possible of the transliteration.:victory:

Edited by nani
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32 minutes ago, nani said:

 Unlike in English accents can have a very important role in other languages so I would rather remove the least possible of the transliteration.:victory:

Okay then. :) Can we get an option to just turn off the specific name? Been asking for this for ages (I think it clutters the UI). 

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First of all, it's a draft proposal, to have something to work with, not a final decision. It includes diacritics per https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1935#80248

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

@Nescio what's your take on this ? I can't commit nor accept https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1935 until this is settled.

That doesn't involve Greek, only Old Persian.

22 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

Are we really sure that we do not just want to stick to three?
´ and ` and ^ (acute, grave and circumflex)

Actually I'm not quite sure what you mean here; Ancient Greek has three accents (rising tone, falling tone, rising-then-falling tone), Modern Greek just one (stress).

22 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

The minuscule Greek "u" for ypsilon belongs to a later age

Yes, I'm aware that minuscules are an early Medieval invention (same for Latin); nor did Greek have word-separators yet. However, 0 A.D. is a 21st C game, so we use spaces, punctuation, upper case and lower case distinction, diacritics, modern fonts, etc.

22 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

and the SOUND of u for ypsilon securely  does not belong in the era of the game but is earlier - our Spartans, Athenians, Macedonians, Ptolemies, Seleucids, said 'y' not 'u'.

Again, there is a fundamental difference between orthographic transliteration (converting one writing system into another) and phonetic transcription (converting sounds into written signs). How something is pronounced is of fundamental importance for the latter (audio voices in 0 A.D.), but quite irrelevant for the former (written specific names in 0 A.D.).

22 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

I disagree in the strongest terms with Y → u , it is a bad decision, it must be Y → y

It doesn't really matter whether we transliterate Υ/υ→Y/y or Υ/υ→U/u, as long as it's done consistently, i.e. map every upsilon to one and the same letter (e.g. ευ→ef, ου→ou, υ→y is understandable but ugly).

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I realize I failed to answer here, so I will do it now.

On 6/5/2019 at 1:03 PM, Nescio said:

That doesn't involve Greek, only Old Persian.

I like consistency, so we should not use diacritics nor different letter for Greek and not for old Persian for consistency's sake.

6 hours ago, Anaxandridas ho Skandiates said:

Can we reach an agreement to standardize, according to the Ancient and Medieval romanization scheme of 2010 used by the American Library Association and Library of Congress?

As we already use american English for the game it might make sense to follow american standards.

So here is my take on this:

  • I like diacritics and flat lines and whatnot
  • I also like that the game displays text in Greek 

However:

  • I can totally understand how specific names can be confusing (eg. Kushites)
  • The player should not be confused by the interface.

 

So I vote for the American Library's convention.


As @wowgetoffyourcellphone said, specific names could be an option. Maybe @Freagarach could submit a patch for that if she wants to. There are not many occurrences of the word so it should be easy to make it togglable 

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