Transliteration Of Thai For French Readers

[sabaijai]

I'm working on a project that requires the transliteration of Thai for French readers. Anyone know of a standardised system for this? Or any system? I've already been told that the RTGS won't work for Francophones ...

[meadish_sweetball]

The first thing that springs to mind is to use whatever official transcription system the French colonial officials/linguists employed for Lao and perhaps adapt it where necessary... the transliteration used for place names in Laos is probably not such a great idea though.

If French people are exposed to IPA when studying English, that could be a viable option as well - Swedish textbooks always have IPA representations of English sounds next to the glossary as a guide to pronunciation. Little time is spent actively learning the system, but since it follows you from age 10-18, some of it is bound to stick.

Update: Discussed this with a French friend. He advocated the use of an IPA based transcription on the grounds that

a.) IPA was developed by a Frenchman

b.) It is an international standard and as such should be encouraged

c.) The different accents of French would make a 'frenchized' spelling difficult to follow for the people not speaking standard French

d.) Many French people have a working knowledge of Spanish and Italian who both have good sound-letter correspondence, and are rather close to the IPA vowel values

I've already been told that the RTGS won't work for Francophones ...

The RTGS is not that bad IMO (not that I am French) - there would have to be a clear explanation of it, comparing it to French sounds though.

As far as I can see, it works as well (or badly) as in English. The obvious mistakes by newbies would be "Kho Fifi' (Koh Phi Phi), 'Fuké' (Phuket) etc.

En fait, je pense que vous devriez poser cette question dans un forum francophone.

[Richard W]

I'm working on a project that requires the transliteration of Thai for French readers. Anyone know of a standardised system for this? Or any system? I've already been told that the RTGS won't work for Francophones ...

Transliteration (preserving letters) or transcription (showing sounds)?

For transliteration, ISO 11940:1998 is target-neutral - I think it confuses everyone. The graphic system is probably a fairly neutral transliteration - if anyone knows how to apply it to native Thai words!

[sabaijai]

Transcription is what I mean. It's for a French guidebook, so IPA is out of the question. My first thought was the same as Mead's, borrow from French transcriptions (I still prefer the word transliteration!) of Lao. Guess that will have to do.

We've already decided to key all place names to RTGS, and just need a system for transliterating names of foods, etc.