Appendix: Arabic Transliteration Systems Used in This Book

Summary

As explained in Chapter 1, the main Arabic transliteration system used in this book is the standardised DIN 31635, but for certain specialised purposes, the computeroriented Buckwalter transliteration is used instead. This appendix gives (1) a parallel table of the two systems, listed along with (and in order of) the Unicode representations of the Arabic letters they transliterate; and (2) a short list of additional notes and exceptions that apply in DIN 31635 (the Buckwalter system has no such exceptions, being a direct one-to-one representation in ASCII of the original sequence of Arabic characters).

Not included here are letters used only for languages other than Arabic (e.g. Persian, Urdu), or the Arabic punctuation marks and numerals, whose relationship to the equivalent Latin punctuation and numerals is straightforward.

Readers unfamiliar with Arabic script should note that any given character can have multiple graphical forms depending on whether it is initial, medial, or final within a word. The list that follows uses the form taken by each character when it appears independently.