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Note on Transliteration
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
xiii The subject of this book poses special challenges for transliteration because it encompasses multiple languages and alphabets—primarily Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian. There is no easy solution to the problems that result, nor is it even feasible to achieve complete internal consistency. With this caveat in mind, the primary goal is to make the main body of the text accessible to a general readership. In most cases, film titles are given in Russian and the names of film industry figures are transliterated according to Russian-based spellings. This is because the book looks at Sergei Parajanov’s life and filmmaking primarily within a Soviet context and was conceived as a contribution to scholarship on Soviet cinema. It acknowledges the practical reality that Russian was the lingua franca of the former Soviet Union as a whole, and that much of the existing literature about Soviet cinema is in the Russian language. Thus, for example, I generally use the Russian-based “Nikolai” instead of the Ukrainian-based “Mykola” and likewise “Alexander” instead of “Oleksandr” when referring to individuals from Ukraine. Parajanov’s given name could be rendered variously as “Sergei,” “Serhii,” or “Sergo” depending on whether one is working with Russian-, Ukrainian-, or Georgian-language sources. I have opted for the Russian-based Sergei, because that was his official name within the Soviet state. For his surname I have chosen “Parajanov” rather than the older, French-based “Paradjanov” or the Russian-based “Paradzhanov.” The single “j” represents the emerging standard spelling in English, is the preferred spelling of the Sergei Parajanov Museum in Yerevan, and corresponds to the hard “j” consonant used with his name in both Armenian and Georgian. Exceptions inevitably remain. I have spelled some Russian names to match their English counterparts (e.g., Alexander instead of Aleksandr and Maria instead of Mariia). For readability, I have chosen not to include soft signs or hard signs, a distinctive feature of Russian and Ukrainian grammar, in proper Note on Transliteration xiv Note on Transliteration names. In some cases I have retained spellings that are already commonly used in the West, such as Illienko (versus Il’enko). Slavic surnames that end with -ii or -yi are rendered simply with a -y, such as Tarkovsky. Given names are usually rendered with an -i at the end, such as Grigori. Names that begin with the letters “iu,” “ia,” or the voiced “e” are rendered with “y”: thus Yuri instead of Iurii and Yevgeni instead of Evgenii. The endings of Armenian names are commonly transliterated as either “-ian” or “-yan.” In most cases I use “-ian” unless the standard spelling for an individual’s name in English dictates otherwise. For Armenian names that begin with “h,” a sound that does not exist in Russian, I have preserved the initial “h” to ensure correct pronunciation; thus I have opted for “Hairian” instead of “Airian.” I have also avoided Russifying the names of established literary figures such as Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky and Mykola Bazhan when they are already known by Ukrainian-based spellings in the West. In the scholarly apparatus and in film titles I adhere to simplified Library of Congress transliteration rules in order to make it easier for researchers to locate the works cited. ...