What Is Transliteration And Why You Need It For Effective Business Communication?
The language barrier is one of the scariest things about opening your business to international customers. And if you have ever thought about expanding your customer base to international customers, you have also had similar insecurities. Perhaps, the part you are worried about the most is how you can read or verify addresses in another language.
Translation is not the best option for business communication, considering the complexities of languages and the expense. It is why more and more businesses are now turning to transliteration for their business communication. But, what is transliteration? And why is it better suited for address verification?
Below, we elaborate on what does transliteration mean and its best features. Furthermore, we also discuss the difference between translation and transliteration and explain why the latter could be a better choice for your business.
What Is Transliteration?
Transliteration is the process of converting text from one language to another. Although it sounds like translation, transliteration and translation are not the same. The primary difference between the two is the underlying meaning.
When you translate a text or language, you still end up with meaningful words and sentences. In other words, you can maintain the underlying meaning in the original language in translation. But when it comes to transliteration, the underlying purpose is lost more often than not.
As you can guess, there is a reason why transliteration and translation are so different despite being so similar. Perhaps the underlying meaning is lost in transliteration because of the literal conversion of characters.
In other words, transliteration switches a text or character from one language to another without bothering about the underlying meaning. Translation, as you know, is slightly more complex. But, we will discuss all the similarities and differences between transliteration and translation in the coming sections.
What Does Transliteration Mean In Address Verification?
Now that you have a clear idea of what is transliteration let’s look at its significance in address verification. As you can guess, transliteration (or translation for that matter) is only applicable when a business deals with international customers.
Of course, it doesn’t apply to all international customers either. Perhaps, it is more apt to say that transliteration and translation in address verification are applicable only when you deal with non-English speaking, global audiences.
International Address Database
You can benefit from transliteration if your business has a customer base that extends beyond English-speaking countries. In this case, you likely have your international customers’ addresses in their native language. You can already see why transliteration and translation are essential here.
The major challenge, of course, is to figure out the location of your customers using the address in Russian, Japanese, Arabic, etc. Imagine how much easier it would be for your business operations to spell the address in your native language.
As you can imagine, both transliteration and translation tools can come in handy in such a situation. Of course, implementing the same is easier said than done, even if you are using relatively simple transliteration for address verification.
CRM Compatibility
You can’t just integrate an address verification solution into your business and hope it works. The essential thing you need to check is that your CRM software can support other languages. At the very least, you should ensure that your CRM can keep all the relevant languages.
However, it would be best for you to ensure a CRM that can support additional languages. Doing so helps you with the potential customer base you wish to target in the future. On the other hand, if you already have an advanced CRM system, then implementing transliteration and translation is relatively easy.
A better CRM will allow you to enhance your business capabilities beyond transliteration and translation. It allows you to run advanced direct mail campaigns to send personalised communication/marketing materials to your international audiences.
Address Parsing And Address Standardisation
One of the ways address verification tools like PostGrid can benefit your business is with its advanced address parsing and standardisation capability. Our system can break down your domestic and international addresses into small units and rearrange them into a standard format.
As you can imagine, the process makes transliteration and translation of your addresses easier. A country’s official postal service provider decides the standard address format for sending postal mail within that country.
For instance, the AusPost defines the standard address format for mailing in Australia. Similarly, USPS defines the standard address format in the US, Royal Mail in the UK, etc.
Explaining What Is Transliteration With Examples
The best way to understand what is transliteration and how it can affect your business communication is through examples. And we don’t blame you if you are still unsure about the concept of transliteration because it is often confusing to everyone.
But the good news is that we will help you clarify these confusions. We will help you understand what does transliteration mean for your business using simple examples. However, it might be a good idea to brush up on your Japanese because the word for the day is KONNICHIWA!
For those of you who have no clue about the Japanese language, KONNICHIWA roughly translates to a greeting like “hello.” And if you were to translate KONNICHIWA to English, it would say hello or good morning. But anyway, we are here to talk about transliteration and not translation.
Conversion In Transliteration
“こんにちは”
What may seem like random symbols you see above is KONNICHIWA in the native Japanese language. Now any transliteration and translation process involves a conversion process. Although both approaches may seem similar, the results of the two methods can often be staggeringly different. The following table should help you understand the conversion process here.
| Japanese Character | Equivalent Sound Of The Character |
| こ | KO |
| ん | N |
| に | NI |
| ち | CHI |
| は | HA or WA |
As we mentioned, transliteration merely gives you the character equivalent of the input language. Even though the conversion process is standard in transliteration and translation, the result here varies significantly.
But before we explain what is the difference between a translation and a transliteration, let us consider the transliteration conversion. Everything goes smooth with transliterating KONNICHIWA from Japanese to English until you reach the last character は.
But, here, things spice up a little in the conversion process because は has two sounds when you transliterate it. The two possible sounds of the character は are HA and WA.
Different Phonetic Matches In Transliteration
We were talking about a single character (は) having different phonetic matches. It is evident from this example that transliteration also depends on the context. But does that mean transliteration and translation are more similar than we think?
Even though the context matters here, there is no way of knowing which. But, to help yourself understand the concept better, think of は like the letter C in “cold” and “city.” As you can see, even though you are using the same letter or character, the sound can be entirely different.
Transliteration Can Vary With The Country
Even if the official language of the two countries is the same, it is not necessary to have the exact transliteration for the characters. It is another noteworthy difference between transliteration and translation. Translation remains somewhat constant for all countries and their respective languages.
Take Australia and the US, for example. Both countries speak English, but we often see differences in how we spell different words. Take the letter “Z”, for example. Most English-speaking countries, including Australia, the UK, New Zealand, etc., pronounce “Z” as ZED.
But when it comes to countries like the US, the pronunciation of “Z” becomes ZEE. So while we spell “organisation” with an “S”, people in the US spell it as “organisation” with a “Z.”
In other words, you can’t transliterate such letters without knowing the country and its language. You can see why we keep saying that the answer to “what is transliteration?” is not always that simple.
Transliteration Is Possible Without Phonetic Conversion
Above, we saw the phonetic conversion process involved in transliteration. But does that mean phonetic conversion is an unavoidable aspect of transliteration? The answer is no because it is possible to have transliteration and translation without phonetic conversion.
It begs the question, “what does transliteration mean if a character in one language has an equivalent in another?”
To answer this question, let’s take another example. Consider the German letter Ö.
Even though the example we consider here is German, you can find the same letter in different German languages, including German, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic. When you transliterate the letter Ö, you can get the result as O or OE. In this case, O and OE are considered equivalent to each other.
Transliteration And Romanisation Are Not The Same
Often, people confuse transliteration with romanisation. However, you could say that romanisation is a form of transliteration. You may wonder what is transliteration in romanisation and how it’s different from any other transliteration.
There are two conditions for this type of transliteration. One – it must not use Roman characters, including the following.
- Arabic
- Chinese
- Cyrillic
- Japanese
- Korean
- And more.
And two – the output language of romanisation must use Roman characters, such as
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
Transliteration Include Converting Numbers
People often don’t think about converting numbers when they research what is transliteration. But surprisingly enough, transliteration also includes converting numbers. Many languages, including Japanese, Korean, etc., have separate numbers, and transliteration can apply to such languages.
For instance, transliteration can include converting Roman numerals to Japanese numbers. You can find the transliteration of five roman numbers to Japanese numbers in the table below. The good thing about transliterating numbers is that it rarely runs into complexities.
As a result, you can get accurate postal numbers, apartment numbers, etc., from an address, which can significantly help your business.
| Roman Number | Japanese Number |
| I | 一 |
| II | 二 |
| III | 三 |
| IV | 四 |
| V | 五 |
Transliteration vs Translation
At this point, you already know that transliteration and translation are not the same. We even discussed the primary differences between the two. But does that mean that’s all the difference between the two processes?
No, there is one other key difference we have not told you about yet. It might have come to your attention that translation is interchangeable. And if you did notice that, then you probably wondered the same about transliteration.
Transliteration Is Not Interchangeable
The example of KONNICHIWA can better explain interchangeability in transliteration and translation. If you go ahead and type in “こんにちは” (KONNICHIWA) in Google Translate, the result would say “HELLO.”
Trying out the reverse and typing in “HELLO” and translating it to Japanese, you will get “こんにちは” as the output. It is the simplest way to understand and ensure the interchangeability of translation. But what about transliteration?
Using the same logic, if you try to transliterate the word “HELLO,” you will likely get this.
“ハロー”
The translation vs transliteration argument gets interesting here. When you transliterate ハロー back to English, instead of getting HELLO, you get HARŌ. Transliteration is not a two-way process. And since interchangeability does not apply to it, there is a good chance of losing information.
Conclusion
Transliteration can benefit businesses across all spectrums regardless of which corner of the world they are in. It is an effective tool that can help you analyse and assess the address information of your contacts without knowing the language.
However, many businesses are still aware of transliteration. And most think transliteration and translation are the same. It is vital to differentiate between the two processes and use them effectively for business communication.
Furthermore, business organisations need advanced address verification service tools like PostGrid to streamline communication. PostGrid’s address verification system can standardise your entire address database in seconds. It is the best way to ensure efficient bulk mailing for your business with a maximum deliverability rate.
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The post What is Transliteration in Address Verification appeared first on PostGrid.
source https://www.postgrid.com.au/what-is-transliteration-in-address-verification/
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