Talk:Tibetan Pinyin

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[edit] Page move?

I've been considering whether this page should move to something like Zangwen Pinyin or Tibetan Pinyin, since this seems to be the only name for the official transcription system that we know of being used outside of Wikipedia. I'd be happy to consider a Tibetan-language equivalent of same, if I knew what it was. I mean, the Tibetan seems to be bod yig gi sgra sbyor, but using Wylie spelling for the title of this page just seems wrong. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 03:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

"Tibetan Pinyin" is a misleading translation of “藏文拼音”. It is clear from both the concept and its Tibetan name (sgra sbyor) that it's a transcription, not "Pinyin". What are your sources for "Tibetan Pinyin" in Western languages? I couldn't find any. —Babelfisch 05:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Although I wasn't very clear, when I said "this" above, I think I was referring to the Chinese name, 藏文拼音, which we would naturally have to transliterate or translate for use in English. However, I did find, by searching google, two instances of the phrase "Tibetan pinyin" used in papers appearing on university websites:[1][2].

"Tibetan Pinyin" is a partial translation, since "pinyin" is untranslated. I don't really see the relevant distinction between "pinyin" and "transcription", at any rate, since the word "pinyin" implies "phonetic transcription".—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 07:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I've seen those two papers, but I don't think they are very good support for this translation. The first paper is by an undergraduate student and it is about a search algorithm for Chinese corpuses. The second paper mentions the term "Tibetan Pinyin" in a sentence which doesn't make sense at all. Neither paper quotes any sources where the term is used.

In English, the word Pinyin means one specific transcription system, i.e. Hanyu Pinyin, see the definitions in the Marriam Webster, Oxford and American Heritage dictionaries, as well as in the Columbia Encyclopedia.

"藏文拼音" means "Tibetan transcription" or "transcription of Tibetan", and I think the title should use one of these translations, maybe with a clarification about it's official status in china, e.g. "official transcription of Tibetan in China", although that's quite clumsy. —Babelfisch 08:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

"Pinyin", unmodified in English, normally refers to Hanyu Pinyin. However, in the case of Tongyong Pinyin, it refers to a different system of phonetic transcription for Chinese. It's worth noting, though, that TYPY is similar in some respects to HYPY, which is also true of Zàngwén Pīnyīn. For that reason, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that we might call it Tibetan Pinyin. Otherwise, I think moving the article to Zangwen Pinyin might be adviseable, since 藏文拼音 is still the only name I've ever seen used to refer to it outside of Wikipedia. Something to the effect of "official transcription of Tibetan in China" is not bad, either, but it's not the name of this thing; it depends on whether we prefer a name or a description.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 21:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] THDL system vs. Tournadre system

The comparison table in this article seems to conflate the "Tournadre system" of transcription with "THDL system", particularly in this edit by Babelfisch. These systems are similar, but not the same, even though Nicolas Tournadre helped design the THDL system and even though the THDL itself sometimes uses the Tournadre system. They are referred to as distinct things right on THDL's page laying out the THDL system: "... THDL employs a relatively precise phonological scheme for transcribing Tibetan for linguistic purposes. This scheme, created by Nicolas Tournadre, is referred to as 'Tournadre Phonetic Transcription' ('Tournadre' for short). However, this scheme is still too technical to be of use for representing Tibetan words in easy-to-pronounce forms within non-Tibetan publications oriented towards a wide readership ... To address the lack of a pronounceable and regular system for rendering Tibetan phonetically, THDL has established a phonological transcription system for use throughout THDL with the aim of making its collections accessible to and user-friendly for the broadest possible audience. We refer to this as the 'THDL Simplified Phonetic Transcription System'". The most notable differences are that THDL uses "e" to represent both the [e] and [ε] sounds, and THDL represents initial stop sounds based on their original spelling, with no clear indication of how they are actual pronounced; thus, Tournadre gives a fuller and more accurate description of the word's pronunciation.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 23:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comparison with wylie?

I am not really an expert in this field and I did not want to make any changes to the article directly, as tibetan transliteration seems to be a hot topic in WP. But I find the comparison of this scheme with wylie a bit misguided.

The scheme that is presented here, seems to aim at presenting the pronunciation only. Looking at how many tibetan letter combinations are merged into one single lattin letter, it seems that it is not possible to reconstruct the original Tibetan writing from this scheme.

Now, I don't say that a transcription scheme for Tibetan must be a bad thing (except that there is no consensus whatsoever about which of the many conflicting schemes to use). But a transcription scheme is not the same as exact transliteration. "Tibetan Pinyin" or however one would call it seems to have a warrented but completely different purpose than wylie.

Therefore I cannot imagine that "It is used inside of China as an alternative to the Wylie transliteration for writing Tibetan in the Latin alphabet." is correct information. How can a phonetic transcription system replace a transliteration system? Transcription and transliteration have completely different purposes, don't they?

I would suggest that the sentence "It is used inside of China as an alternative to the Wylie transliteration for writing Tibetan in the Latin alphabet." be corrected and the actual use of Tibetan Pinyin be adequately characterized by somebody who knows how this scheme is actually used in China.

ok, these are my 2cents. I hope nobody takes offense. Faximile 14:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)