transliterate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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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:
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
Though most of the world’s languages have no written form, people are beginning to transliterate their mother tongues into the alphabet of a national language.
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2011
Haug shall transliterate for me the grammatical forms into your alphabet.
From Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities by Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
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
Meaning, till the Church transliterates its entire set of Roman-script liturgical, ritual and other holy books to Devanagiri, the use of Roman Script will not die.
From Behind the News: Voices from Goa's Press by Various
The city has asked translators to furnish names that are transliterated, a process that more closely approximates English pronunciations.
From New York Times ● Feb. 18, 2024
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
Team officials also asked them to take those transliterated names.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 13, 2022
In Chaucer’s time, spelling was less standard and people often simply transliterated pronunciations onto the page.
From Slate ● Aug. 31, 2020
The Islamic statement of faith, in transliterated Arabic: there is no God but God.
From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green
We transcribed every handwritten name on the lists into a database, transliterating them from Arabic to English.
From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2022
“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
Arabic writing does not include most vowels, and he’s transliterating the language in his head.
From Washington Post ● May 4, 2016
When transliterating a multi word phrase, the transliteration is done using the Hebrew word ordering of right to left.
From Rashi by Szold, Adele
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.
