Turning the pages back... October 20, 1996 (10/15/00)

Turning the pages back...

October 20, 1996

Four years ago in October, The Ukrainian Weekly reported on a decision by the Ukrainian Legal Terminology Commission, of April 19, 1996, on an English-Ukrainian transliteration system.

Petro Matiaszek, then executive director of the Council of Advisors to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, outlined Decision No. 9 for readers of The Weekly in an article published on October 20, 1996. Its principal finding: "Transliteration should be made directly between Ukrainian and English without the use of any intermediary languages. ..."

Mr. Matiaszek explained that "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). ...

"[A] 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," noted Mr. Matiaszek. "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.' (... However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed all of its representatives on the correct transliteration of the Ukrainian letters 'g' and '.' ...)"

Mr. Matiaszek noted that even though the commission had issued its decision, "the controversy over the most authentic (and user-friendly) way to recreate often complex Ukrainian phonetic sounds will likely continue." And so it does, as seen from documents issued and used by Ukraine's officials even today.

Source: "Ukraine's Legal Terminology Commission adopts official transliteration system" by Petro Matiaszek, The Ukrainian Weekly, October 20, 1996, Vol. LXIV, No. 42.

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