Picture this: You’re looking at a restaurant menu in Tokyo, and thankfully, there’s a version with Japanese words written in the Latin alphabet. While you can now pronounce the dishes, you still don’t know what they mean.
This perfectly illustrates the difference between translation and transliteration—two distinct but equally important language conversion processes.
What’s the Difference Between Translation and Transliteration?
Both involve converting words from one language to another, but they serve different purposes. Translation focuses on conveying meaning, whereas transliteration helps with pronunciation and script conversion.
When you translate text, you’re focused on preserving the original message while making it understandable for speakers of the target language. For instance, the Hindi words “शुभ रात्रि” are translated to “good night” in English, conveying the same meaning in a different language.
Transliteration, on the other hand, is the process of converting words from one script to another while maintaining pronunciation. It doesn’t tell you the meaning of the words; instead, it helps you pronounce them.
Using our previous example, those same Hindi words would be transliterated as “shubh ratri” in the Latin alphabet. So the transliteration helps English speakers pronounce the Hindi phrase, even if they don’t understand the meaning.
Here’s another example: the Hebrew word “שלום” is translated to “peace” in English, but its transliteration is “shalom.” Professional translation services often provide such transliteration along with translation when working in languages that use different scripts, such as Georgian, Arabic, Russian, or Chinese.
This conversion is particularly valuable when dealing with proper names, brand names, or cultural terms that need to maintain their original pronunciation while being written in a different script.
Uses of Translation vs Transliteration
When handling translation and localization projects, your choice of service depends on specific communication goals. For example, even simple words like ‘good evening’ aren’t transliterated; they need translation to convey their meaning in the target language.
Meanwhile, names, places and cultural terms often benefit from transliteration to help the target audience pronounce them correctly.
A skilled translator can work with both processes to bridge communication gaps, and the uses of translation are obviously extensive. When you need a translation, most professional services typically handle:
- Legal documents requiring precise meaning
- Marketing materials that need cultural adaptation
- Technical documentation
- Website content for international markets
- Educational materials
But they’ll also use transliteration when working with content that needs phonetic transcription in the Latin alphabet. Common applications include:
- Writing foreign names in English
- Academic citations from original language references
- Building multilingual databases
- Managing government records
- Developing international branding strategies
Working with a Translation Service
While decent translation software and AI can handle a lot of tasks, complex projects still greatly benefit from human expertise. A professional language service provider understands how to adapt the meaning of words in another language while preserving cultural nuances, something machine translation can’t fully master.
A translation agency will help determine the best approach for your specific needs. Ask for transliteration when working with:
- Different alphabets (Latin, Cyrillic, Devanagari, etc.)
- Names and terms that need consistent pronunciation
- Academic references and citations
- Multilingual databases
- International branding elements
Most international projects benefit from combining both approaches. When entering Asian markets for example, you might need translation for marketing content and transliteration for brand names, so that your message resonates while keeping your brand recognizable across writing systems.
Scientific publications demonstrate this well: technical terms are transliterated to maintain precise pronunciation, while the surrounding text is translated for comprehension. This combination ensures both accuracy and accessibility.
