transliterate
Americanverb (used with object)
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transliterates,
present (3rd person singular)
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transliterated,
past participle, past
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transliterating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
transliteratesimple
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transliteratessimple
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have transliteratedperfect
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has transliteratedperfect
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am transliteratingprogressive
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are transliteratingprogressive
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is transliteratingprogressive
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have been transliteratingperfect progressive
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has been transliteratingperfect progressive
Past
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transliteratedsimple
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had transliteratedperfect
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was transliteratingprogressive
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were transliteratingprogressive
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had been transliteratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of transliterate
First recorded 1860–65; trans- + Latin lītter(a), litter(a) letter 1 + -ate 1
Explanation
To transliterate is to rewrite something in a different alphabet. When you transliterate the name Пётр from Russian into English, it's generally spelled Peter. Transliterate comes from two Latin roots, trans, or "across," and littera, "letter or character." It's related to translate, with an important distinction: when you translate something, you interpret its meaning and put that in a different language. When you transliterate, you're simply changing the alphabet in which a word is written, so that it can be read or pronounced in a different language.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Dodson decided to essentially transliterate the line, despite the grammatical awkwardness it introduces in English: “In the depths of the virgin-forest was born Macunaíma, hero of our people.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 7, 2023
The best an English translation can do is to transliterate the Greek letters—“Ototototoi”—or go with something like “Woe is me!” or “Alas!”
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 7, 2019
In attempting to devise an alphabetic system with which to transliterate Chinese, Mr. Zhou was continuing an orthographic tradition that went back at least to the 16th century.
From New York Times ● Jan. 14, 2017
Maybe there was too much internal debate on how to best transliterate it.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 19, 2013
In 1901, there had been a reform of the German spelling system, changing "th" into "t" in all words where it does not transliterate the Greek letter theta.
From My Life and My Efforts by Gunther Olesch
There’s a word in Japanese that transliterates to “komorebi” and refers to a phenomenon for which there is no single word in English: the quality of light as it filters through foliage.
From New York Times ● Feb. 7, 2024
The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his son Saad Alkabli, who transliterates his surname differently.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 16, 2021
Otherwise, though, from the opener “Bigger,” The Gift transliterates the leonine royal-family drama and “circle of life” worldview of The Lion King into the recent main leitmotif of Beyoncé’s own work.
From Slate ● Jul. 19, 2019
They included “Edano_my_Angel,” “Edano_go_to_bed” and “Edano_nero,” which transliterates a Japanese word meaning “go to sleep.”
From BusinessWeek ● Mar. 16, 2011
The form Samrū, or Shamrū, transliterates the Hindustāni spelling.
From Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman
Associated Press journalists saw some walls cracked or partially collapsed in the empty Aksu country village of Youkakeyamansu, a name transliterated in Mandarin from Uyghur.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 23, 2024
The inhabitants of Dat’s new town are gray cartoonish monsters whose language, transliterated onto the page, is a keysmash of Wingdings; Dat and his mother, by contrast, are full-color and human.
From New York Times ● Apr. 22, 2022
Each one has at its center a simulated label emblazoned with that phrase, but transliterated into Japanese.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 22, 2022
In Chaucer’s time, spelling was less standard and people often simply transliterated pronunciations onto the page.
From Slate ● Aug. 31, 2020
Mohan opens his book and starts reciting the transliterated words.
From "You Bring the Distant Near" by Mitali Perkins
We transcribed every handwritten name on the lists into a database, transliterating them from Arabic to English.
From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2022
Her nonconformist style tempts critics to place her in categories where she doesn’t belong — she’s no dull neo-formalist, though she takes pleasure transliterating Shakespeare’s sonnets, delights in reworking phrases from Yeats.
From New York Times ● Jun. 24, 2020
“Simply transliterating Mitsuha and Taki’s star-crossed friendship into English, relocating it to the Pacific Northwest, and hoping for the best would be a disaster of its own,” David Ehrlich wrote on the IndieWire website.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 2, 2017
Almost certainly, a native Russian speaker wrote the original material, correctly transliterating the Russian “f” as “ph”.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 12, 2017
When transliterating a multi word phrase, the transliteration is done using the Hebrew word ordering of right to left.
From Rashi by Adele Szold
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
