Translit

Translit is a method of encoding Cyrillic letters with Latin ones. The term stems from transliteration, a method used by translators to "translate" otherwise untranslatable words such as names or geographical locations. There is evidence of translit use in international telegraphic communications in the past.

Since most equipment and software is English oriented or even totally incompatible with Cyrillic, the only way to communicate in native languages was the use of translit. It found its way into web forums, chats, messengers, emails etc. It was also used a lot for communication in MMORPG and other network games by an increasingly large number of Russian players.

As network technologies became more compatible with Cyrillic the use of translit generally became considered a bad and even unacceptable practice among Cyrillic alphabet users, sometimes to a point where translit users were banned or totally ignored in Cyrillic-using communities, the only exception being unavoidable use such as working from a terminal abroad with no Cyrillic support at all. Still some sites in Cyrillic are present in translit as well to serve as a backup in case of problems with encoding.

Translit in Cyrillic-using countries received its last development impulse with the increasing availability of mobile phones. At first the situation there was the same as with computers; neither mobile phones nor mobile network operators supported Cyrillic. Even though the situation soon changed, there were still a few drawbacks to the use of Cyrillic, the most important of them being message length: an SMS in Latin letters can contain up to 160 characters, while an SMS in Cyrillic characters was limited to only 60 to 80. Since this influenced the cost of messaging, translit was and still is commonly used in most SMS messages just because it's more comfortable.

Sometimes «y», «yu», «yo», «ye», «ya» also serve as transliteration for «й», «ю», «ё», «э», «я».

However, lately a more aggressive form of translit appeared. It is usually associated with teens new to the web and neglecting its rules. The main feature is the use of numbers to substitute some of the letters. For example, 4 reads as "ch" and is used to translit letter "ч", from the transliteration of the word "four" in Russian ("Chetiry", четыре), or, arguably, the appearance of the letter similar to that of four in Arabic numerals. Also, a number can substitute its whole name as part of a word: "sov7" for "sovsem" or "posmo3" for "posmotri".

Such translit is often so distorted that even native speakers have trouble reading it. Where usual translit is unwanted but tolerated, this new form usually provokes instant disrespect from the entire communityPOV-statement|date=December 2007.

Russia and other former Soviet republics have adopted the ISO 9 transliteration standard for official use (under the designation 7.79-2000), replacing the old Soviet GOST 16876-71.

ee also

*Transliteration
*Volapuk encoding
*Russian Chat Alphabet
*Romanization of Russian

External links

* [http://www.translit.cc/ Translit Ru/En] Online Russian-English Transliteration, supports multiple transliteration standards and spell check.
* [http://www.translit.ru/ Translit.ru] Russian-English transliterator and spell checker (in Russian).