Principles for Transliteration

1. Readability. Even if the text is meant for computer processing, it needs to be read easily.

2. Consistency: e.g. all retroflex consonants have the underdot (but not necessarily vice versa).

3. Approximation: the symbol used should remind one of the sound, and of the transliteration scheme used for printing.

4. Economy: use the least number of symbols.

5. Elegance. This will also improve readability. E.g. aa seems better than A for long a.
   The concepts of 'light' and 'heavy' transliteration are relevant here. .ph is a heavy transliteration and f is a light one. Similarly, #r, @l are heavy and .r, :l are light. This concept also relates to speed of typing.
   

6. Partial reversibility: two segments of text in the target script, arising from the same source script, are to be the same if, and only if, the segments in the source script are either identical or use alternative orthography.

               Source segment              Target segment
               ------------------          --------------
              segment1(orth-1) )________\
              segment1(orth-2) )        /   [segment1]'
   
   

   Ex. The inherent vowel must always be transliterated, to avoid confusion with the use of virama:

   
                     Source           Target
                     ------           ------
                     'ka'              k  (INCORRECT)
                     'ka-virama'       k
                     'ka'              ka (CORRECT)
   

7. Uniformity: two segments of text in the target script, arising from different source scripts, are to be the same if, and only if, the two segments in the source scripts correspond precisely, according to comparative linguistics.

   Ex. According to Bishop Caldwell [1875, p.13], Tamil aytam does not correspond to Devanagari visarga:

                Tamil    Devanagari      Latin
                -----    ----------      -----
                aytam                     k_macr-b
                          visarga         h_dot-b
   

   Ex. Tamil and Malayalam (and other older forms of S. Indian scripts) have a retroflex fricative, often popularly transliterated zh, and in scholarly works in many ways, including 'r' or 'l' with diacritical marks. The letters in the two scripts are equivalent, so uniform transcription has something like:

             Tamil      Malayalam      Latin
            --------    ---------      -----
           (Tam form)   (Mal form)     r_diaeresis-b
   

8. Compromise: one symbol may have different meanings if its interpretation is never in doubt. Compromise is also necessary whenever two of these principles conflict.

A basic reference for transliteration is the book by Wellisch.

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