Transcription/Transliteration Rules

Recording of Proper Names and Titles of Foreign Origin in Georgian

Proceeding from the specificity of Sakpatenti activities, the question of recording proper names and titles of foreign origin arises systematically (when difficulties are encountered related with rendering the applications filed from various countries by means of the transliteration method in the Georgian language. In particular, the question of selecting as Georgian correspondences თ or ტ; პ or ფ; კ or ქ, for: t, th, ght; p, ph, f; c, ck, k, q and similar phonemes, and other similar rules of transcription-transliteration). The failure to solve this problem often causes appearance of double variants for one and the same title. Introduction of unified rules for transliteration are aimed to prevent undesirable doubling and to allow on all the official levels identification of pragmonyms occurring in one and the same application, filed at different times by different persons.

For this reason, Sakpatenti selected as a guide the tables of phonetic correspondences, given in the Academic Dictionaries of the Institute of Linguistics of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, such as: “The Spelling Dictionary of Geographical Names of Foreign Countries”, Chief Scientific Edition of the Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia, Tbilisi, 1989, “The Spelling Dictionary of Foreign Proper Names”, Chief Scientific Edition of the Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia, Tbilisi, 1989, These dictionaries are based on the rules established by the scientific team, which are put into practice in the Academic Edition of the Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia. By means of these tables it is mainly possible to find phonetic correspondences for items of 12 languages. As a result of consultations with specialists, the thirteenth table – for the Turkish language - has been prepared at Sakpatenti.

It is desirable that in the applications filed with Sakpatenti the proper names and titles of foreign origin be recorded according to the above-mentioned principle. All exceptional cases, when a necessary recommendation fails to be found in the presented tables, will be considered at Sakpatenti by a special commission.