04:09 pm, 19 Apr 06
arabic transliteration
Quick hack: Simple Arabic Transliterator. You type in roman letters and it shows Arabic. Try e.g. "aljbr" to see the word that "algebra" comes from.
I feel like I've written this program four times, though maybe making it web-based will make it useful for other people. It's pretty straightforward except it uses a longest-match rule so "kh" produces a different character than "k".
I wrote this one for Meena, who then wrote me a short email in Arabic in return. I can read about half of it.
I feel like I've written this program four times, though maybe making it web-based will make it useful for other people. It's pretty straightforward except it uses a longest-match rule so "kh" produces a different character than "k".
I wrote this one for Meena, who then wrote me a short email in Arabic in return. I can read about half of it.
two notes
Maybe show the map under the input box? I had to read the source and use my l33t alphabet knowledge to figure out, e.g., ص.er, the other one
four's right, you're teh awesomeRe: two notes
I was thinking of doing like a "hints" box. Something like "type as it sounds; pharyngealized/"heavy" consonants are capitalized".Can I use it here, please?
that's very useful!
How did you come up with the mapping? I know my mac has a phonetic arabic map, but I'm at work right now and can't compare your keys with its keys.I can't get hamza to appear; is it overwritten by ayn in the map? I also can't get gh to show up as a letter (I get the latin 'g' followed by the arabic 'h').
Also also, 'A' could map to \u0622, ';' to \u061b, '?' to \u061f, 'h:' to \u0629.
Re: that's very useful!
The mapping was all based on my intuition of what things sound like.Thanks for the tips! I'm not very knowledgable about arabic.
I fixed gh, added ; and ?. Is alef with madda more common than alef with other characters like hamza? Shouldn't teh marbuta be ht or something? ('cause when it's within a word it still has the "t" sound?)
Re: that's very useful!
I don't read a lot of Arabic on the internet, so I can't tell if alef with madda is more common than the other variants. I looked at a couple of Arabic news sites, and it seems that the hamza variants aren't always written with the hamza. Looking at wikipedia, I see \u0622 as the only modified alef.Oh, and I rarely see \u064A. Maybe make one of i or y \u0649?
ht is probably better than h:. I was going by how it looks at the end of a word!
Re: that's very useful!
I think your input method is better. I've listed the differences here. There may be more characters.For some reason, 1, shift-1, and 2 ended up on the left side of the last line, instead of on the right.
I created a web page because I couldn't post to LJ with that text; I kept getting the bad unicode input error.
Re: that's very useful!
The LJ problem may be my custom style's fault... will investigate.I'll be using this when I take Arabic next year.