Transliteration is the means of presenting an Arabic word using English letters. This guide aims to explain the way Arabic words and names should be interpreted, in order for the result to be clear to the English speaker and to enable him/her to pronounce words correctly. There are various schools of transliteration, for example: IE (The Encyclopedia of Islam), ISO (The International Organization for Standardization), and ALA (Library of Congress). The system that is followed here is an eclectic one. Our aim at Adage is to adhere to the Arabic pronunciation as closely as possible while removing the awkward symbols that can make difficult the smooth comprehension of the text.

Arabic Alphabet

* The pronunciation of these two letters differs according to their position within the word. More details are in the following table.

Letters with diacritical marks in Arabic

Please note the difference in transliteration with regards to the position of the letter ع. If it occurs at the beginning of a word, the apostrophe is not be used (for example: Imrān). Only when it occurs in the middle or at the end of the word should the apostrophe be placed before the letter indicating it (example: Mos'ab). The same rule applies for الهمزة as well. The apostrophe is an indication of the glottal stop that accompanies such letters, which should not be missed in pronunciation. However, this indication is not needed at the beginning of the word, because when a new syllable/word starts with a vowel, a glottal stop naturally occurs.

Short and long vowels in Arabic