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Note on Transliteration and Referencing
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Note on Transliteration and Referencing Romanization of the Perso-Arabic script is a perennial problem in scholarly publication. Although standardization has always been a basic aim, each scholarly subcommunity has its own perspective on the problem. In reconciling the differences we have been unable to live up to Bacon’s precept that consistency is the foundation of virtue, and have taken refuge rather in Wilde’s comment that it is the last refuge of the unimaginative . Since any effort to standardize the Roman representation of usage of the Arabic script from all the areas of the Persianate world covered in this volume, although it would please some readers, would unavoidably alienate others, we have allowed the intrusion of more than one “standard,” aiming at consistency so far as possible within chapters but not over the whole volume. With regard to diacritics our policy has been minimalist, and is based on the assumption that for readers who know the languages diacritics are redundant, while for readers who do not know the languages they serve no useful purpose. We have, however, bowed in the direction of one pre-publication reader and distinguished long from short /a/ by the use of macrons where it seemed useful to do so. Otherwise we hope the Glossary will serve to clarify any confusion. Referencing is a similar problem—one that varies by the disciplinary training of the author rather than by the history of Western study of the particular language. We have dealt with it by means of a similar compromise , striving for consistency within chapters, within a larger relaxed framework for the volume. But in this case minimalism was not an option, and xviii Note on Transliteration and Referencing the result has produced some repetition between information included in endnotes, lists of citations, and in-text references. It should, however, be easily intelligible to readers of any background. ...