Ukraine's Legal Terminology Commission adopts official transliteration system (10/20/96)

Ukraine's Legal Terminology Commission adopts official transliteration system

by Petro Matiaszek

KYIV - The Ukrainian Legal Terminology Commission's Decision No. 9 of April 19 remains largely unknown in the diaspora where an official English-Ukrainian transliteration system from Ukraine has been eagerly awaited. Yet it was precisely that decision which officially approved a transliteration system for the Ukrainian language's Cyrillic alphabet. Nonetheless, the controversy over the most authentic (and user-friendly) way to recreate often complex Ukrainian phonetic sounds will likely continue.

The transliteration table itself was adopted by the Legal Terminology Commission at the initiative of the Ukrainian Language Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Decision No. 9 designates the Language Institute as the primary arbiter for any secondary decisions that result from the use of the transliteration table. Use of the approved system is not mandatory for the transliteration of foreign names into Ukraine.

Transliteration should be made directly between Ukrainian and English without the use of any intermediary languages. Decision No. 9, in accordance with the Legal Terminology Commission's express authority, is binding only for the transliteration of Ukrainian names in English in legislative and official acts.

For brevity's sake, the system routinely allows for names such as the city of "Zaporizhzhia" to be given as "Zaporizhia," "L'viv" as "Lviv," etc. Also included is a short list of official spellings for miscellaneous terms: "Ukraine" (no use of the article "the"), "Crimea" (as opposed to "Krym"), "Black Sea" and "Sea of Azov." In certain cases, "traditional" forms may be shown in parentheses after the official form: "Dnipro (Dnieper)."

Disagreement is likely to center on the use of "zgh" to represent the rare Ukrainian combination "Á"." So, the Ukrainian Edu-cation Minister's name -"á"ÛÓ,Ò¸ÍËÈ" - may be recreated as "Zghurovskyi," ostensibly to avoid the confusion that would result from the transliteration into English of the letter "Ê", which, according to the table, would also appear as "zh."

Another problem is the use of "i" for "ª" where the letter appears in sccondary positions (not at the beginning of a word). Thus, Ukraine's port city is called "Mykolaiv," which according to critics closely resembles the Russian spealling for the city. The same holds true for "Ukraina."

Another source of confusion stems from a typographical error that appeared in the executive branch's official organ, "Uriadovyi Kurier" (Government Courier), which officially published Decision No. 9. When it came time to typeset the unique Ukrainian character "£" - "g" (once banned by Moscow because of its absence in the Russian alphabet), the typographers repeated the letter """ - "h." The resulting error gives the impression that the letter """ may be recreated in English as either "h" or "g." Thus, "Igor," "Olga," etc., technically remain acceptable English forms. (As of September 5, no official correction had been printed. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed all of its representatives on the correct transliteration of the Ukrainian letters "g" and "£". In addition, it has circulated official notes throughout the diplomatic community on the obligatory use of the table for all languages with Latin alphabets).

Decision No. 9 requests that any comments on the system be directed to the Ukrainian Language Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, vul. Hrushevskoho 4, Kyiv, Ukraine, 252001.

Petro Matiaszek is executive director of the Council of Advisors to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada.

How to transliterate from Ukrainian to English