Russian Transliteration

Abstract

I AM afraid the authors of the “new system” of transliteration have misunderstood my letter in yours of April 10 (p. 534) advocating “the tabulation of the system of transliteration which has been so long in use in this country” in preference to the adoption of the unnecessary novelties they propose to introduce. By the “system in use” I meant that for transliteration from Russian into English, and certainly did not include the transliterations from Russian into German which have been copied from books or memoirs in that language into English catalogues or journals. As practically all the examples the authors adduce in defence of their “new system,” including both the atlases and the works with which they associate my name, are of this kind—i.e. merely copies of transliterations from Russian into German—I fail to see what bearing they have on the question of transliteration into English, however useful they might be in constructing a system for transliteration from Russian into German.