Automatic transliteration. Address translation service and how to write an address on foreign stores

Online service: text transliteration- writing Russian characters in Latin.

About transliteration of Russian names and surnames

When filling out registration forms, questionnaires, different kind documents (for example, a passport or visa), you have to write your last name, first name, address in Latin (English) letters. This service allows automate translation ( transliteration) Russians letters in English.

How to write the last name and first name in English? How to correctly name a Russian site English letters? There are various systems or rules for the transliteration of names and surnames (transliteration of Russian words). They are based on the process of simply replacing the letters of the Russian alphabet with the corresponding letters or combinations of letters. English alphabet(see below). The difference between the systems of transliteration of names and surnames is observed when translating some letters, for example, E, E, Ъ, b and diphthongs (combinations of a vowel and Y).

A - A K - K X - KH
B - B L - L C - TS (TC)
B - V M - M H - CH
G - G H - N SH - SH
D - D O - O Щ - SHCH
E - E, YE P - P b -
Yo - E, YE R - R Y - Y
Zh - ZH C - S b -
Z - Z T - T E - E
I - I U - U Yu - YU (IU)
Y - Y (I) F - F I am YA (IA)

In order to translate english letters in Russians Paste the text into the top input field and click the "Make" button. As a result, in the lower input field you will get the translation of the Russian text into a transcript (Russian words in English letters).

Note. Since March 16, 2010, new Cyrillic transliteration rules for the Russian alphabet have been used when issuing a passport. The result may not match the old name, for example, on plastic card. In order for the name to be entered correctly in the passport (as before), that is, so that it matches the name on the credit card or driving license Ah, you need to submit an additional application. Example: Julia new system will be Iuliia , most likely you will want Julia or Yuliya (which, in my opinion, is more harmonious).

When applying for a driver's license, a transliteration system is used that is different from a foreign passport, similar to the system for a US visa. At the request of the owner of the record in Latin letters in driver's licenses can

Igor. Update: October 1, 2018 .

Hello, dear readers of the blog site! I decided to dedicate this post to the topic of transliteration, which, in a nutshell, is the rules for writing text using signs of another language (say, in Russian in Latin).

I think that almost all users have encountered this phenomenon, and many used transliteration, conveying their thoughts in Russian, but writing them in English letters, simply not having a Russian-language keyboard layout in the visual display.

Such texts (notes or messages) written in Latin characters can still be found on some forums. Moreover, their users write, basically not observing any rules that take place and which we will talk about below. The main purpose of such communication is to convey information to an audience that would adequately perceive it.

Some used (and still use) transliteration from Russian into English when sending SMS from a mobile phone, if there is no corresponding language option. However, these are not the only examples of using translit. Today we'll talk about this.

Transliteration rules and its difference from transcription

To begin with, let's define the basic concepts for a more accurate understanding of the subject, and also learn the fundamental difference between such terms as "transcription" and "transliteration".

Transcription- this is a broad concept, which means, as accurately as possible, the transmission of the sounds of a particular language through a certain system of symbols.

Transliteration provides the display of letters of one script using signs of another script, while not focusing on pronunciation.

Words written with special characters are extremely useful for learning correct pronunciation when studying foreign languages. Here are some examples of transcription of Russian words in Latin in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) format:

Address - Adrʲɪs Alexey - ɐLʲɪksʲej Almanac - ɐLʲmɐNax Gogol - ɡOɡɡlʲ Dmitry - Dmʲitrʲɪj Evgeny - Jɪvɡʲenʲɪj Ekaterinburg - Jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnburk Mikhail - Mʲɪxɐil Dictionary - SLɐVARʲ Tatyana - Tɐtʲjænə Yulia - Jʉlʲɪjə Yuriy - Jʉrʲɪj

Most languages ​​(including English and Russian) have their own transcription rules, when each word is matched by its phonetic counterpart, which describes its sound. Here are a couple of examples:

Smile - smile (Russian transcription) smile - (English transcription)

Moreover, letters and words in Cyrillic can be transcribed into English, and vice versa.

The task of transliteration, as we have already defined, is a simple display of the symbols of one script using the signs of another. Then the Russian words given above as an example (including names) will be transliterated into the same English as follows:

Address - Adres Aleksey - Aleksej Almanac - Al "manah Gogol - Gogol" Dmitry - Dmitrij Eugene - Evgenij Yekaterinburg - Ekaterinburg Mikhail - Mihail Dictionary - Slovar" Tatiana - Tat "jana Julia - Julija Yuri - Jurij

I think now difference between transcription and transliteration in general meaning these terms is obvious. There are many transliteration standards, sometimes incompatible with each other. Historically, there have been several state standards(GOST), which, including Soviet time regulate transliteration.

The current international standard is ISO-9, regulating general principles translation from Russian into Latin. Its main advantage is that it eliminates the ambiguity of interpretation.

In it, each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet corresponds to a certain letter of the Latin alphabet or its combination with a special symbol (diacrit). Diacritics- special superscript or subscript characters that are added to letters.

A striking example is the """ icon present in some of the transliterated words presented above (say, Tat "jana), which indicates softening of consonants (analogue soft sign"ь" in the Russian alphabet). As a result of this correspondence, reverse transliteration is possible even if the language is not recognized.

Despite the existence of the international standard ISO-9, which very unambiguously reflects the principles of translating Russian alphabet characters into Latin, it is not the only one, since alternative basic rules are applied in various areas.

If you are intrigued by this topic and you want to get to know it better, then you can find a list of all the main standards for transliterating Cyrillic languages ​​using the Latin alphabet on a special Wikipedia page.

Transliteration methods used in practice

After presenting the theoretical part, it's time to dwell on the types of practical use of transliteration. Here they are:

1. Practical transcription — is based on the ISO-9 type standard I mentioned above. It is necessary to observe not only grammatical, but also phonetic correspondence between both languages. In other words, it is necessary to find a "golden mean" in the spelling and sounding of a word based on both languages.

Advantage this method is to facilitate text input. In this case, only Latin characters are used. True, slight difficulties may arise when reading some specific consonants that have such correspondences: “zh-zh”, “ch-ch”, “sh-sh”, “sh-shch”.

It is also used when sending SMS, and also often in the addresses of Russian-language websites and when working with software that does not support Cyrillic. Below is a table of the most commonly used rules for transliteration of the Russian alphabet in Latin:


Please note that several variants of Latin characters correspond to some Russian letters at once (v, d, e, ё, g, z, d, k, l, x, c, h, w, u, b, s, b, e, yu, i). They are arranged in descending order of application popularity.

2. gamer language (alternative name"Volapyuk encoding") - here they use letters along with numbers and punctuation marks. He received this name due to the fact that such a transliteration is in use between gamers (players of computer games).

The fact is that in such games there are basically no options for using Cyrillic in nicknames, so gamers make up such a set of English characters and numbers that look like Russian letters (for example, “Cuneiform” in the gaming version looks like “KJIuHonucb”).

For the formation of Russian nicknames, this is even original, but for the purpose of sending SMS, and even more so when communicating, this method is clearly not suitable. True, some webmasters sometimes use gaming transliteration for their site (for example, nouck.ru or kypc.ru).

3. Vulgar- the most popular version of transliteration in communication between ordinary users. It is based on a mixture of transcription and gamer language. A compromise has been reached here, since this option is quite simple to enter and at the same time easy to read.

Let's say it uses the number "4" to denote the letter "H". Also, instead of “W” they put an asterisk “*”, instead of “W” - “W”, etc. In general, the usual translit allows almost any interpretation, the main thing is that the author is comfortable writing the text, and readers can easily perceive it correctly.

Transliteration of names, surnames and website addresses

And now we are moving on to the practical area, where the relevant standards must be strictly observed. For example, very often you need to provide data (first name, last name, your address) when registering on foreign sites, for example, on the same Google Adsense () or payment systems websites (for example, PayPal).

If you are registering from the territory Russian Federation, then strictly follow the rules applied when issuing passports, otherwise difficulties may arise.

Therefore, the correct spelling of the Russian name, surname, address (as well as other necessary data) in English can help you a lot.

For webmasters, clear and consistent compliance with the rules for transliteration of Russian words is also of paramount importance. After all, many owners of web resources on the Runet use translit both in page addresses and in the name of their sites.

What is it for? The fact is that keyword-containing URLs () of web pages have positive influence for SEO website promotion. You say it's a trifle? But the successful promotion of any project just consists of continuous nuances.

Indirect evidence of this can be the fact that, for example, Yandex, when ranking (in how search engines rank sites), quite recently even highlighted the keywords in the URLs in bold in the search results:


Thus, it is very important to observe the correct translit from Russian into English for the addresses of all pages of your site. For this purpose, it is worth taking the table provided above as a basis.

Also keep in mind that when composing a URL, it is best to limit the character set to the following: use only numbers (0-9), uppercase (A-Z) and lowercase (a-z) letters, as well as dashes (“-”) and underscores ("_").

For those who have web resources, there is a simple extension (however, this plugin has not been updated for a long time, so for ardent perfectionists like me there is a more modern analogue) that provides automatic translation of Russian letters in the page address, while creating CNC (human-understandable urls).

Regarding search engine optimization, I would like to dwell on one more nuance (I remind you that there are no trifles in promotion). Despite the fact that the main international standard is on this moment ISO-9, transliteration in Yandex and Google has its own characteristics.

For example, in the generally accepted standard, the Russian letter "x" (ha) corresponds to the Latin "x" (X). However, Yandex does not highlight keywords with this option in the URL in the search results (only those keywords where "x" is transliterated into "h" are subject to bold):


A similar situation is observed with Google, although there are some differences with the Russian search engine in the transliteration rules for the "empire of goodness".

Since many webmasters and owners of commercial resources are a little more focused on Yandex, in the last chapter I will provide one of online services, which makes it possible to correctly translate into transliteration any set of letters that meets the rules of the "Runet mirror".

In general, you can always manually put down the desired letter when compiling the url of any web page. Using the automatic option in the face of the same RusToLat, we lose some time for editing, since in the settings of this plugin it is possible to set only the ISO-9 standard as the most suitable one. And in it just the correspondence "x" - "x".

Of course, you can find a way out here too. Namely, slightly change the plugin file, where the correspondences between the Russian and Latin alphabets are defined. To do this, open it for editing (I advise you to use the Notpad++ editor in such cases) and replace the necessary characters:


Just don't forget to make sure that RusToLat is configured correctly in (ISO 9-95 encoding should be set there):


Naturally, to do such an operation or not, everyone decides for himself. By the way, I would be glad to any comment from you regarding this aspect. Is the game worth the candle?

In order to achieve active participation your site in image search, you can use translit keywords in the name of the image files. For these purposes, it is convenient to use the Punto Switcher program. After activating the software, simply select the name of the graphic file and press Alt + Scroll Lock on the keyboard (default hotkeys in Switcher).

Transliteration translators online

1. First of all, I would like to immediately fulfill the promise and provide a service that takes into account the rules of Yandex (I suspect that for search engine Google will work too.) This is Translit-online.ru where there are multiple options to choose from. On the main tab, you can translate online any text for reading up to 50,000 characters long:


Below are the settings for some symbols inherent only in Cyrillic (ё, й, х, ц, ш, е), which cause some difficulties when converting them to Latin. Since this is a translation mode for reading, you can adjust the correspondence according to your understanding:

Here is the next page online translator you can just use to translate into translit the page address of your CNC website:


There is also such an interesting tool as a virtual keyboard. It allows you to type in Russian, even if you do not have a Russian layout. By switching it to the English layout, you can print using Latin characters that are most consonant with their Russian counterparts. True, you must first set the virtual keyboard to the "RU" mode using the "Esc" button:

For example, to get the word “transliteration”, after the above actions, you need to type “t-r-a-n-s-l-i-t-e-r-a-c-i” in English, and to display the letter “i” in the text field, you must first press Ctrl, and then “a”.

Among the useful features this service there is also a variant of the name and surname for the passport, this option is extremely suitable when registering on important foreign resources, which I mentioned above in the article. On a separate tab, an online multilingual translator from Russian and vice versa is provided.

2. Another online transliteration translator is a well-known resource Translit.net(former Translit.ru), where are their advantages. There is also a virtual keyboard right on the home page, which allows you to transliterate text.


Why are SEO URLs with the correct transliteration so important for a website?

For a competent, correct formation of the structure of a web resource, one of the main conditions is a unique CNC (human-understandable URL). The url type gives the user an idea of ​​what is on the page, and tells the search robot what the format is, what is the relevance to the query, and so on. In a word, it provides information that is used in the algorithm for searching and issuing web pages. Thus, when setting the address of a resource, it is necessary to use Yandex transliteration.

Why choose transliteration from Yandex?

Yandex transliteration is different from the usual transliteration

Analyzing links, the Yandex search robot pays attention to site addresses. And here the url written in transliteration plays an important role. It turns out that Yandex transliteration does not comply with traditional transliteration rules. There are exceptions to the translation of Cyrillic characters into Latin. For example, for Yandex, the transcription of the letter "u" differs from the generally accepted one - SHH instead of SHCH.

Transliterate Yandex URL and site ranking

SEO strategies necessarily take into account ranking algorithms. Thus, the webmaster seeks to improve the position of the web resource in the search results. Correct URLs increase the chances of getting closer to the first positions in the SERP. Pages with the correct transliterated address are ranked higher by the search engine. Consequently, an Internet resource where the correct Yandex transliteration is observed gets an advantage over competitors.

Yandex also integrated a useful bonus for sites that use competent transliteration in the search - highlighting the transliterated address. This selection is powerful tool to attract visitors to the resource, increase the number of site conversions as a whole.

What type of CNC to choose?

Transliteration or translation into English language, Cyrillic?

The following three translation options are available on the site:

  • Competent translit according to the rules of Yandex. Ideal for Yandex, but not suitable for Google. Google will not highlight these words in the search results.
  • Manual translation of the word into English. Unfortunately, such links are useless for Yandex, but for Google it is a priority.
  • Use of writing URL in Cyrillic. Minus - external anchorless links will look like this http://domain.ru/%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0.

The conclusion is clear: to create a CNC site on the Internet for Yandex, we use the online transliteration service. For Google, we simply take the translation of the word into English.

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