Certain Evaluations and Resolutions upon Translation, Writing and Spelling Issues Encountered in Persian-Turkish and Ottoman-Turkish Dictionaries

Abstract

Certain Evaluations and Resolutions upon Translation, Writing and Spelling Issues Encountered in Persian-Turkish and Ottoman-Turkish Dictionaries
As the interest of the Western scholars ascended upon the East, transcription has become one of the most significant topics, which came forth as an issue with the adoption of the Latin alphabet on 3 November 1928 in Turkey. The change of centuries-old alphabets with another writing system brings up some problems naturally. Transcription is considered among these problems. The Western scholars address the issue that it began with the Meninski's dictionary Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, which involves the Latin equivalents of Arabic, Persian and Turkish words, and concludes the issue with the publication of the transcription system in 1894 prepared by The Royal Asiatic Society established in London by a commission for the Sanskrit and Arabic alphabet.
The necessity of changes and improvements of the Ottoman alphabet put forward in Tanzimat Period since the inadequacies and deficiencies of the alphabet required. Various researches and studies were carried out by scholars on the subject. Türkçede Arabî ve Latin Harfleri ve İmlâ Meseleleri by Avram Galanti was one of the first works in the Republic of Turkey on the issue of Arabic and Latin alphabets that was written in 1925. The transition to the Latin alphabet, which started to be bruited within the Tanzimat Period, accelerated with the establishment of the Republic and ended with the acceptance of the Latin alphabet in 1928.
Based on the studies conducted in the West, the spelling symbols letters suitable for the Turkish sound harmony of the translation text were determined in terms of bot transcription and transliteration. In this regard, the modern Turkish transfer process in academic studies on Ottoman Turkish in Turkey are conducted by considering theEncyclopedia of Islam which is 2 different studies within the same title from the Ministry of Education and Türkiye Diyanet Foundation. In addition, some public institutions, organizations and universities have also determined their own writing rules based on these two works. Although there is an overall unity in scientific studies conducted today, some characters are written differently. The differences are seen at the characters of "ñ, ŋ, ā, â, ū, û, į, î", special names, compound words, geographical names, book names, etc., which are formed with Arabic and Persian words used in our language. Although there are minor differences in the letters identified, many studies have been done on them and considerable distance has been taken. Due to these differences, while translating dictionaries written in Ottoman Turkish to dictionaries written in Persian-Turkish into today's alphabet, some words of Arabic and Persian origin used in Turkish and the explanations of these words are not confronted in translation. In this article, it will be emphasized the importance of providing unity of translation and spelling in scientific studies and publications made by institutions and organizations by showing the spelling differences determined in the dictionaries.