App-Lingua-BO-Wylie-Transliteration
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NAME
App::Lingua::BO::Wylie::Transliteration
VERSION
version 0.1.0
SYNOPSIS
Wylie transliterate can be used to transliterate words from Wylie
Transliteration to (Classical) Tibetan (dbu med)
BACKGROUND
When you have one (foreign) alphabet and would like to display it in a
different alphabet (example: Russian to Latin alphabet), you will want
to use a certain transliteration scheme.
Just compare all the different names you can find "Dostojevski"
transliterated to, to see what enourmous differences there will be.
Now for the Classical Tibetan "dbu med" alphabet there exist two main
transliteration schemes:
* Library of Congress Transliteration
* Wylie Transliteration
Classical Tibetan alphabet itself works in a really interesting way.
First, let's have a look at the table of the individual "characters"
with their Wylie transliterations:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_alphabet>
A few key observations:
* (Almost) all letters represent a consonant, carrying an inherent
vocal: "a"
* These letters/syllables are sorted according to tonality and
aspiration (in pronunciation)
* Other vocals will be achieved by adding certain vocal-symbols in the
proper places:
* i.e. you can build the following syllables by adding a vowel sign:
* ka -> ko
* ka -> ku
* ka -> ki
* ka -> ke
The latter is a process of merging symbols to form new symbols (with the
merging taking place in the proper places -- 'e' is on top, 'u' will be
inserted at the bottom)
This merging process can be seen as building "ligatures", of which even
more exist.
As we have seen, the vocal symbols (for all vocals except 'a', which is
inherent) need to be added in the proper places.
For the rest of the symbols that can be added, the scheme looks the
following:
b s g r u b s
| | | | | | |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
With the places being the following:
1) Prescript 2) Superscript 3) The Center piece (carriyng the inherent
vocal, mandatory) 4) Subscript 5) The vocal sign 6) Postscript1 7)
Postscript2
Note: Except from the Center piece (3), all other signs are optional.
Note: Optional character can form ligatures with the character they are
combined with.
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND (UNICODE)
The Unicode consortium had to decide what they want their code points to
look like:
a) either each altered base syllable is represented (i.e. ka, ko, ke,
ki, ku) as a separate character (code point) b) the base syllables are
represented and the altered syllables will be merged
Since it was chosen for the latter, this has a few consequences:
* The graphical representation will depend on building ligatures and
thus on the font you are using.
* That means you have to make sure you have appropriate fonts to
display the signs correctly.
Even if you find the ligatures not mixed together well (e.g. on your
shell), you can still copy-paste the results somewhere else where you
have a proper font available. Since only the code points are represented
and it is up to the font to build the ligatures you will find the
copy-pasted result come out very well with a proper font having the
ligatures available.
Copy-pasting your results
here(http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/wyconverter.php)
might help should the tibetan signs not be rendered correctly on your
shell
USAGE
echo bsgrubs | wylie-transliterate
or
wylie-transliterate <FILE>
MOTIVATION
"Nobody needs such a module!" -- you might say. I agree. But the one
person who might need it will be more than happy to have. (Given he/she
finds it in the webz).
Still though, let me just say:
* I do it because I can
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