Wylie Romanization transliteration system
Character set of transcription
Tibetan base characters with vowel "a" are the same as standard Wylie
system. Vowels are also same as Wylie system, that is, "a", "i",
"u", "e", "o", "ai", "au".
Numerals are written by roman numerals.
Log-yig (characters for the transcription of Sanskrit retroflex letters) are
written by capital letters, that is, "Ta", "THa", "Da",
"Na", "SHa". Anusvara is transcribed by "M",
visarga by ":". Half vowel ri and li are expressed by "rI"
and "lI". Note that "I" represents a reversed gigu. It is
noteworthy that capital letters have special meanings in Extended Wylie Method
and we must avoid the usage of them for proper names.
Transcribe all Tibetan characters as they are. This rule is suited especially
for the transcription of Sanskrit words. For example, long vowels in Sanskrit
are expressed by achung + vowel in Tibetan, that is, "bh'uta".
Exception rule for base character "a". It is expressed only when the
initial character is a vowel 'a' and is not followed by any other vowels. Words
begining with a vowel other than 'a' must be written without a base charcter
'a'. Ex. "indra", "amrIta". Initial long vowel is expressed
by short vowel + apostrophe. Ex. "a'nanda".
tseg is not expressed at all.
Space, tab and carriage return are neglected in transcribed texts, therefore you
can use these letters and format text as you like.
Brackets, that is, "[" and "]", are utilized to insert any
notes or comments of the scholar. For example, pagination should be written in
brackets. 9. Braces, that is, "{" and "}", are utilized to
write texts in languages other than Tibetan.
Hyphen is used to express that the Tibetan characters should not be stacked
vertically, but should be juxtaposed horizontally. For example of the classical
Tibetan, "g-yang" which is opposed to "gyang".
Plus sign "+" is used to express that the Tibetan characters should be
stacked vertically. For example, "s+ha" represents the transcription
of Sanskrit word "sha". If the plus sign is not inserted, then it will
be misunderstood as one Tibetan character "sha".
Explanation
Usefulness of the standard Wylie system
The so-called "Wylie system" of transcription of Tibetan language was
proposed by Prof. T. V. Wylie. In the same year, Prof. H. Kitamura and Prof. T.
Nishida also wrote an article on Tibetan language transcription system, in which
they proposed the same system of transcription as Prof. Wylie. The special
characteristic of this method is that only ascii characters are utilized to
transcribe Tibetan characters. For it was designed to type Tibetan language by
the normal English keyboard.
This characteristic remains valid for the input of Tibetan language in the
computer. In some computers, for example Macintosh, one can input special
characters (or characters with diacritical marks).
But if we take into account the portability of texts, we should restrict letters
to transcribe Tibetan characters within ascii characters. If the text is
expressed in ascii character, then we can reuse it in another way later. This is
the greatest advantage of Wylie transcription system.
Problems of the standard Wylie method
But there are some weak points in the Wylie system. One of them is that the
principle to transcribe the transcription of Sanskrit words by Tibetan
characters is not defined. For this reason some scholars transcribe them in the
ordinary Sanskrit transcription by roman characters with diacritical marks. This
means that the one text may include two transcription systems, the transcription
system of Sanskrit and that of Tibetan.
If the work is for a publication and its author only takes into account printing
it on paper, then a mix of transcription systems is not a problem. But if the
author is considering reusing the text in different formats (and this case will
become more frequent in the near future), it would be better to adopt a unified
transcription system. The propose of such unified system is the main object of
the Extended Wylie Transcription System.
Another weak point, I think, is that the Wylie system does not define the usage
of punctuations, including several kinds of shad or ornament character and
parenthesis, brackets and so on. Each scholar expresses them differently. This
makes it difficult for any text-handling programs to analyze Tibetan transcribed
texts.
Rules of Extended Wylie Method
I want to advance one suggestion to improve the Wylie system. I designed it to
conform to the Tibetan script system on the Macintoshª computer. In fact, it
was for convenience of systematic conversion of transcribed texts to Tibetan
characters that I defined the rules of the transcription.
These rules are almost compatible with Tibetan script system on the Macintosh,
as I wrote above. They are also compatible with transcription system of the
Asian Classic Input Project. TibetanConverter can convert these two
transcription system and Tibetan script system each other almost perfectly.
These rules can not define all the occurences of Tibetan characters, punctuation
or signs. If some difficulties happen, I will append some rules to cope with
them.
