Ubuntu Manpage: Lingua::Translit - transliterates text between writing systems

Provided by: liblingua-translit-perl_0.24-1_all

NAME

       Lingua::Translit - transliterates text between writing systems

SYNOPSIS

         use Lingua::Translit;

         my $tr = new Lingua::Translit("ISO 843");

         my $text_tr = $tr->translit("character oriented string");

         if ($tr->can_reverse()) {
           $text_tr = $tr->translit_reverse("character oriented string");
         }

DESCRIPTION

Lingua::Translit can be used to convert text from one writing system to another, based on
national or international transliteration tables. Where possible a reverse
transliteration is supported.

The term "transliteration" describes the conversion of text from one writing system or
alphabet to another one. The conversion is ideally unique, mapping one character to
exactly one character, so the original spelling can be reconstructed. Practically this is
not always the case and one single letter of the original alpabet can be transcribed as
two, three or even more letters.

Furthermore there is more than one transliteration scheme for one writing system.
Therefore it is an important and necessary information, which scheme will be or has been
used to transliterate a text, to work integrative and be able to reconstruct the original
data.

Reconstruction is a problem though for non-unique transliterations, if no language
specific knowledge is available as the resulting clusters of letters may be ambigous. For
example, the Greek character "PSI" maps to "ps", but "ps" could also result from the
sequence "PI", "SIGMA" since "PI" maps to "p" and "SIGMA" maps to s. If a transliteration
table leads to ambigous conversions, the provided table cannot be used reverse.

Otherwise the table can be used in both directions, if appreciated. So if ISO 9 is
originally created to convert Cyrillic letters to the Latin alphabet, the reverse
transliteration will transform Latin letters to Cyrillic.

METHODS

   new("name of table")
       Initializes an object with the specific transliteration table, e.g. "ISO 9".

   translit("character oriented string")
       Transliterates the given text according to the object's transliteration table.  Returns
       the transliterated text.

   translit_reverse("character oriented string")
       Transliterates the given text according to the object's transliteration table, but uses it
       the other way round. For example table ISO 9 is a transliteration scheme for the converion
       of Cyrillic letters to the Latin alphabet. So if used reverse, Latin letters will be
       mapped to Cyrillic ones.

       Returns the transliterated text.

   can_reverse()
       Returns true (1), iff reverse transliteration is possible.  False (0) otherwise.

   name()
       Returns the name of the chosen transliteration table, e.g. "ISO 9".

   desc()
       Returns a description for the transliteration, e.g. "ISO 9:1995, Cyrillic to Latin".

SUPPORTED TRANSLITERATIONS

       Cyrillic
           ALA-LC RUS, not reversible, ALA-LC:1997, Cyrillic to Latin, Russian

           ISO 9, reversible, ISO 9:1995, Cyrillic to Latin

           ISO/R 9, reversible, ISO 9:1954, Cyrillic to Latin

           DIN 1460 RUS, reversible, DIN 1460:1982, Cyrillic to Latin, Russian

           DIN 1460 UKR, reversible, DIN 1460:1982, Cyrillic to Latin, Ukrainian

           DIN 1460 BUL, reversible, DIN 1460:1982, Cyrillic to Latin, Bulgarian

           Streamlined System BUL, not reversible, The Streamlined System: 2006, Cyrillic to
           Latin, Bulgarian

           GOST 7.79 RUS, reversible, GOST 7.79:2000 (table B), Cyrillic to Latin, Russian

           GOST 7.79 RUS OLD, not reversible, GOST 7.79:2000 (table B), Cyrillic to Latin with
           support for Old Russian (pre 1918), Russian

           GOST 7.79 UKR, reversible, GOST 7.79:2000 (table B), Cyrillic to Latin, Ukrainian

       Greek
           ISO 843, not reversible, ISO 843:1997, Greek to Latin

           DIN 31634, not reversible, DIN 31634:1982, Greek to Latin

           Greeklish, not reversible, Greeklish (Phonetic), Greek to Latin

       Latin
           Common CES, not reversible, Czech without diacritics

           Common DEU, not reversible, German without umlauts

           Common POL, not reversible, Unaccented Polish

           Common RON, not reversible, Romanian without diacritics as commonly used

           Common SLK, not reversible, Slovak without diacritics

           Common SLV, not reversible, Slovenian without diacritics

           ISO 8859-16 RON, reversible, Romanian with appropriate diacritics

       Arabic
           Common ARA, not reversible, Common Romanization of Arabic

ADDING NEW TRANSLITERATIONS

       In case you want to add your own transliteration tables to Lingua::Translit, have a look
       at the developer manual included in the distribution.  An online version is available at
       <http://www.lingua-systems.com/translit/downloads/>.

       A template of a transliteration table is provided as well (xml/template.xml) so you can
       easily start developing.

RESTRICTIONS

       Lingua::Translit is suited to handle Unicode and utilizes comparisons and regular
       expressions that rely on code points.  Therefore, any input is supposed to be character
       oriented ("use utf8;", ...) instead of byte oriented.

       However, if your data is byte oriented, be sure to pass it UTF-8 encoded to translit()
       and/or translit_reverse() - it will be converted internally.

BUGS

       None known.

       Please report bugs to perl@lingua-systems.com.

CREDITS

       Thanks to Dr. Daniel Eiwen, Romanisches Seminar, Universitaet Koeln for his help on
       Romanian transliteration.

       Thanks to Dmitry Smal and Rusar Publishing for contributing the "ALA-LC RUS"
       transliteration table.

       Thanks to Ahmed Elsheshtawy for his help implementing the "Common ARA" Arabic
       transliteration.

       Thanks to Dusan Vuckovic for contributing the "ISO/R 9" transliteration table.

       Thanks to Xtefan Suciu for contributing the "ISO 8859-16 RON" transliteration table.

AUTHORS

       Alex Linke <alinke@lingua-systems.com>

       Rona Linke <rlinke@lingua-systems.com>

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2007-2008 Alex Linke and Rona Linke

       Copyright (C) 2009-2015 Lingua-Systems Software GmbH

       This module is free software. It may be used, redistributed and/or modified under the
       terms of either the GPL v2 or the Artistic license.