ITRANS

The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" (ITRANS) is an ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly for Devanagari script.

The need for a simple encoding scheme that used only keys available on an ordinary keyboard was felt in the early days of the RMIM newsgroup where lyrics and trivia about Indian popular movie songs was being discussed. In parallel was a Sanskrit Mailing list that quickly felt the need of an exact and unambiguous encoding. ITRANS emerged on the RMIM newsgroup as early as 1994.[1] This was spearheaded by Avinash Chopde, who developed a transliteration[2] package. Its latest version is v5.34. The package also enables automatic[3] conversion[4] of the Roman script to the Indic version.

ITRANS was in use for the encoding of Indian etexts - it is wider in scope than the Harvard-Kyoto scheme for Devanagari transliteration, with which it coincides largely, but not entirely. The early Sanskrit mailing list of the early 1990s, almost same time as RMIM, developed into the full blown Sanskrit Documents project and now uses ITRANS extensively, with thousands of encoded texts. With the wider implementation of Unicode, the traditional IAST is used increasingly also for electronic texts.

Like the Harvard-Kyoto scheme, the ITRANS romanization only uses diacritical signs found on the common English-language computer keyboard, and it is quite easy to read and pick up.

ITRANS transliteration scheme

ITRANS transliteration scheme[3] is given in the tables below. The ITRANS method is without using diacritics, as compared to other transliteration methods. While using ITRANS, for proper nouns, first letter capitalization is not possible since, ITRANS uses both capital and small letters in its lettering scheme.

Vowels
Table: Vowels
Devanāgarī Gurumukhi/Punjabi Telugu Kannada Tamil Malayalam Eastern Nagari ITRANS
अ ਅ అ ಅ அ അ অ a
आ ਆ ఆ ಆ ஆ ആ আ A/aa
इ ਇ ఇ ಇ இ ഇ ই i
ई ਈ ఈ ಈ ஈ ഈ ঈ I/ii
उ ਉ ఉ ಉ உ ഉ উ u
ऊ ਊ ఊ ಊ ஊ ഊ ঊ U/uu
ऋ ఋ ಋ ഋ ঋ RRi/R^i
ॠ ౠ ೠ ൠ ৠ RRI/R^I
ऌ ఌ ಌ ഌ ঌ LLi/L^i
ॡ ౡ ೡ ൡ ৡ LLI/L^I
ఎ ಎ எ എ E/ee
ए ਏ ఏ ಏ ஏ ഏ এ Ē/ēē
ऐ ਐ ఐ ಐ ஐ ഐ ঐ Ei
ओ ਓ ఒ ಒ ஒ ഒ ও O/oo
ఓ ಓ ஓ ഓ Ō/ōō
औ ਔ ఔ ಔ ஔ ഔ ঔ Ou
अं(added as anusvāra) ਂ/ ੰ అం ಅಂ ം অং M/N/.m
अः ਃ ಅಃ ಅಃ ഃ অঃ H
अँ ਂ/ ੰ అఁ অঁ .N
्(virāma/halant) ੍ ్ ್ ் ് ্ .h
Udāta/Udaat ੑ
ऽ(avagraha:elision during sandhi) ఽ ಽ ഽ ঽ .a
ॐ (Om symbol) ఓం ௐ OM, AUM

Consonants

The Devanāgarī consonant letters include an implicit 'a' sound. In all of the transliteration systems, that 'a' sound must be represented explicitly.

Table: ITRANS Devanagari consonants
कखगघङVelar
kakhagagha~Na
चछजझञPalatal
chaChajajha~na
टठडढणRetroflex
TaThaDaDhaNa
तथदधनDental
tathadadhana
पफबभमLabial
paphababhama
यरलवSemi-vowel
yaralava/wa
शषसहळFricative
shaShasahaLa

Irregular consonant clusters
Table: Irregular consonant clusters
Devanāgarī ITRANS
क्ष kSa/kSha/xa
त्र tra
ज्ञ GYa/j~na
श्र shra

Consonants with Nuqta
Table: Consonants with nuqta(except the last two)
Devanāgarī ITRANS
क़ qa
ख़ Ka
ग़ Ga
ज़ za
फ़ fa
ड़ .Da/Ra
ढ़ .Dha/Rha

See also

References
  1. "An early post from 1995 referring to ITRANS effort going on RMIM newsgroup". Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  2. Aksharamukha transliteration tool. Akshara Mukha is an Asian script (two way) converter freeware. It converts between 20 different South Asian & East Asian scripts. It also supports 5 major Latin transliteration conventions such as IAST, ISO, Harvard Kyoto, ITRANS & Velthuis. You can access the project from here. While using the tool, 'source' can be set to for example: ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto, and 'target' can be set to a particular script like Devanagari-Hindi.(When you are using a north Indian script, tick the box: Remove ‘a’.) It can work in reverse too, for example from Hindi to Latin by ISO transliteration.
  3. "ITRANS (version 5.34) website describing scheme. (Avinash Chopde)". www.aczoom.com. Retrieved 15 December 2015. Online Interface to ITRANS (Online converter tool from Latin script using ITRANS to various Indic scripts. Reliable source at converter tool page gives the mapping spreadsheet (has clear tilde sign). Scheme for Devanagari and tables for all the languages covered. Ultimately the conversion tool follows the mapping spreadsheet. Source code at GitHub itrans
  4. Google Transliteration (supports Indic languages) Online and downloadable tool for transliteration by Google. (Also additionally uses ITRANS but older version 1)
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