Transcription Standards

Kalmasoft Roman Arabic Transcription System

KRATS (Kalmasoft Roman Arabic Transcription System©) is a phonemic transcription system to convert all Latin script based proper nouns to Abjad based Arabic parallel. The system is developed to be used for Arabicizing names written in Roman alphabet in general.

Name Arabicization is not an easy straigntforward task since the Arabic writing system is not standard over all Arabic speaking geography, it mainly requires special consideration for the different Arabic dialectal varities that manifest the way each name's is spelled; in many cases, the usage of different letters is based on the dialect that covers the area under consideration.

While such names will phonetically remain specific to their original languages, this transcription standard is sufficiently good to approximate the phonemic characteristics of the targeted romanized version. You may download KRATS as text file or the print version from the link below.

The system is not meant to retrieve names that are originally Arabic, it also not suited for Arabicizing names that are romanized using specific transcription or transliteration system.

Fields key

Latin: Latin letter
Language: Latin scripted language
Arabic: Arabic letter
Dialect: Arabic dialect, ARAB: Common or MSA, LVNT: Levantine, EGYP: Egyptian, MORC: Moroccan, OMAN: Omani, HASN: Hassaniya, IRAQ: Iraqi, SDAN: Sudanese, HJAZ: Hijazi, YMEN: Yemeni
Position: Position the Latin letter, INT: initial, MED: medial, FIN: final, ANY: anywhere
Name: Arabic letter name
Unicode: Unicode for the Arabic character
IPA: Arabic letter phonetic transcription in IPA