Abstract
Academic publications in Islamic and Near Eastern studies make use of transliteration systems to render words from the Arabic script into the Roman script; this process is also called Romanization (from Arabic). Accuracy in the application of these transliteration systems has long been an essential characteristic of rigorous scholarship. However, the standards of transliteration in academic writing, editing, and publishing have been gradually declining, to the extent that some of the relatively recent scholarly monographs in Islamic and Near Eastern Studies, that have been considered to be ground-breaking and trend-setting, have featured fundamental and embarrassing errors in transliteration—errors that cannot be attributed to typographical carelessness alone. This decline has now seeped into the world of journalism as well. This paper will address issues in Arabic-to-Roman transliteration. It will also document some prominent cases that demonstrate the decline in standards. It will end with recommendations for authors, editors, and publishers, in whose interest it is to ensure the quality of transliteration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I use the adjective “academic” on purpose, in order to distinguish academic writing and editing from scholarly writing and editing. While academic writing/editing points toward material that is published on a range of issues on different academic fora, and while scholarly writing too points toward the same, the term “scholarly editing” can have a very different connotation, pointing primarily toward the practice of producing critical editions in the humanities. In the humanities, this practice has become so common that there is an academic journal devoted to the study of issues in producing critical editions, Scholarly Editing. It is in order to avoid confusion that I have used the adjective “academic” instead of scholarly—what I mean by it is the writing that is published primarily in academic monographs and journals.
See: Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 4.
“To the myopic dotter of i’s and crosser of t’s, a dot under a consonant or a macron over a vowel are matters of utmost importance. The presence or absence of a dot under the k will distinguish between the word for “heart” and that for “dog””—Carlton S. Coon, Caravan: The Story of the Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1951), v. This was brought to my attention by: Brinkley Messick, “Notes on Transliteration”, in P. Rubel and A. Rosman, eds., Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology (New York: Berg, 2003), 185.
Messick, “Notes on Transliteration”, 182.
For instance: F. W. Newman, “Transliteration”, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Apr., 1891): 340–343.
This is evident from the innumerable book reviews published in academic journals devoted to Islamic and Middle Eastern studies that either praise the transliteration in the books under review, or, as is more often the case, criticize either the author or the editor or the publisher for not paying attention to mistakes in transliteration. In both cases, it is seldom the case that a review of a book published in these fields will gloss over this aspect of the publication. I have given multiple examples of this later in the article.
There are no scientific data to verify this. This claim arises simply out of my reading and observation over the years, which, it turns out, is also vouched for by: Messick, 183.
For instance: L. Clarke, ed. & tr., Shī‘ite Heritage: Essays on Classical and Modern Traditions (Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2001); Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, eds., Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority (Leiden: Brill, 2012); James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013).
For instance: Sami G. Massoud, The Chronicles and Annalistic Sources of the Early Mamluk Circassian Period (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Shihan de Silva Jayasuria and Jean-Pierre Angenot, Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Nico Kaptein, Islam, Colonialism and the Modern Age in the Netherlands East Indies: A Biography of Sayyid ‘Uthman (1822–1914) (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
For instance: Elvire Corboz, Guardians of Shi‘ism: Sacred Authority and Translational Family Networks (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Mimi Hanaoka, Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Peripheries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Karen C. Pinto, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016).
In the world of Urdu studies, the most commonly-used transliteration system seems to be the one designed by the Annual of Urdu Studies, a scholarly journal that enjoyed good reputation until it ceased publication in 2014.
Hamid Dabashi, Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012).
Malise Ruthven, “The Revolutionary Shias”, New York Review of Books (Dec. 22, 2011), accessed on Nov. 21, 2017, url: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/12/22/revolutionary-shias/.
Dabashi, Shi’ism, 327.
Dabashi, Shi’ism, 328.
Dabashi, Shi’ism, 329.
Dabashi, Shi’ism, 330.
Manan Ahmed Asif, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2016).
S. Nomanul Haq, “Gujarati sandals in Baghdad: Decolonising history”, Herald (Dec. 4, 2016), accessed on Dec. 16, 2016, url: http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153594.
Michael Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur’an, Mi‘raj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 2004).
Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, 321.
This would be a phonetic transliteration of the word, emphasizing the need for pronouncing the word correctly. This would not live up to the principle of reversibility that would allow for a word to be converted back into its original script.
‘Abu should either have a hamzah (’) at the beginning or nothing at all; the ‘u’ in ‘Abu should have a macron, especially when there are other similar cases with macrons appropriately placed.
For someone with ordinary Arabic training, Ḥamid can be read as both Ḥāmid and Ḥamīd, both very popular names in the Islamic world. Without proper diacritics, the name can be misleading.
These publications feature the wrong symbol for the ‘ayn in Shari‘ah, not just in the titles of the publications but also throughout their texts: Humayon A. Dar & Umar F. Moghul, eds., The Chancellor guide to the legal and Shari’a aspects of Islamic finance (London: Chancellor Publications, 2009); Rex Ahdar & Nicholas Aroney, eds., Shari’a in the West (Oxford University Press, 2010); Bryan S. Turner, Adam Possamai, & James T. Richardson, eds., Legal pluralism and Shari’a law (New York: Routledge, 2014); and Michael Buehler, The politics of Shari’a law: Islamist activists and the state in democratizing Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974).
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 3–20.
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 5 (n. 1).
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 8 (italics in the original).
Many scholars in Islamic studies and other related fields have expressed the view that for those who know Arabic, transliteration is redundant, while for those who do not know Arabic, transliteration is useless. Messick has discussed at least three authors who share this view (see Messick, “Notes on Transliteration”, 186–188). Add to this Fred Donner, who claims that “the general reader is confused or put off by them [diacritical marks], the specialist generally does not need them, and the publisher abhors them as cumbersome and costly” (Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), xvii).
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 5 (n. 1).
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 5.
Rauf Parekh, “A brief history of ‘musha’era’,” Dawn (Nov. 29, 2016), accessed on Dec. 20, 2016, url: http://www.dawn.com/news/1299275.
The Punjabi poet himself spells his name as Anwar Masood (anglicized).
The correct transliteration is miṣra‘.
The famous Sufi, Rābi‘ah of Baṣrah.
Here are just some of the cases where authors commenting on other people’s work and academics reviewing academic publications made it a point to write about mistakes and idiosyncrasies in transliteration: Erika Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin: Religions and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 64 (n. 21); Talat S. Halman, The Turkish Muse: Views and Reviews, 1960s–1990s, ed. J. L. Warner (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 79; Alan Mikhail, “[Review of] Millenial Landscape Change in Jordan”, Agricultural History 83.1 (2009): 113; G. A. Russell, “[Review of] Science in the Medieval World”, Library and Culture 30.1 (1995): 102; Geoffrey Wheeler, “[Review of] Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia”, The English Historical Review 85.334 (1970): 199; George F. Hourani, “[Review of] The Philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 19.4 (1960): 300; Harry Munt, “[Review of] People from the Desert”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 103 (2013): 434; Sema‘an I. Salem, “[Review of] Medieval Agriculture and Islamic Science”, Speculum 71.1 (1996): 114; Morris C. Leikind, “[Review of] Medieval and Renaissance Medicine”, The Quarterly Review of Biology 35.4 (1960): 325; Adnan F. Haydar, “[Review of] When the Words Burn”, Middle East Journal 44.3 (1990): 529; Philip K. Hitti, “[Review of] The Arabs in History”, Speculum 26.3 (1951): 522; Ousmane Kane, “[Review of] Islamic Society in Practice”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 30.2 (1997): 367–368; Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “[Review of] Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law”, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 21.2 (1987): 304.
In 2015, the Oxford University Press (OUP) Pakistan arranged a training course for editors by Syed Nomanul Haq, a scholar of Islamic intellectual history and South Asian studies. A part of the course addressed issues in transliteration. There are even manuals that can be used for trainings. One such manual was compiled by a team at the Islamic Research Institute (IRI), the International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI), in as early as 1986. See: Islamic Research Institute, Workshop on Technical Editing (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1986).
For instance: writing “Ishāq” instead of “Isḥāq”, in Annemarie Schimmel, “Islamic Studies in Germany: A Historical Overview”, Islamic Studies 49.3 (2010): 407; and writing “Shari’a/Shari’ah” instead of “Shari‘a/Shari‘ah”, in W. M. Ballantyne, “The Shari’a: A Speech to the IBA Conference in Cairo, on Arab Comparative and Commercial Law, 15–18 February 1987”, Arab Law Quarterly 2.1 (1987): 12; Ida Madieha bt. Abdul Ghani Azmi, “The Philosophy of Intellectual Property Rights over Ideas in Cyberspace: A Comparative Analysis between the Western Jurisprudence and the Shari’ah”, Arab Law Quarterly 19.1/4 (2004): 191.
The most obvious examples are Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Brill, among many others.
Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi: Islam in Modern South Asia (London: Oneworld, 2008).
Donner, Muhammad and his Believers, v.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The author expresses his sincere gratitude to S. Nomanul Haq and Asif Iftikhar for their comments on an earlier draft of the article.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gul, A. The Declining Standards of Arabic-to-Roman Transliteration in Academic Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Pub Res Q 34, 1–10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-018-9566-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-018-9566-3