Hi…I never heard of the changes!!!!  Tony

From: cohsl-list-bounces@lists.fas.harvard.edu [mailto:cohsl-list-bounces@lists.fas.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Lesage, Rhea
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:50 AM
To: listserv for the Consortium of Hellenic Studies Librarians
Cc: Hazen, Dan; Scott, Alison
Subject: [Cohsl-list] FW: Greek transliteration

All, this is the message that I wrote to Bob Hiatt from LC in Dec. 2008. He was in touch at that time asking my feedback on proposed tables, which confused transcription with transliteration. He also brought up the issue of the rough breathing, for which I offered a solution. I bolded the part of the message in which I suggested that we open the discussion up to the cataloging and Modern Greek Studies communities. I never got a reply from him, but it seems that he went ahead and implemented the change that now appears on the LC website.  I would like to know if ANYONE heard about these supposed “2009 changes” before yesterday.  Please respond to this list!

--Rhea

From: Lesage, Rhea
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 4:09 PM
To: Lesage, Rhea
Subject: FW: Greek transliteration

From: Rhea Karabelas Lesage [mailto:karabel@fas.harvard.edu]
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2008 6:04 PM
To: Robert Miller Hiatt
Cc: Rhea Karabelas Lesage
Subject: Greek transliteration

Hi, Bob:
Thank you for getting in touch about changes to the Greek tables, and for returning my call to discuss this over the phone. I wanted to give you my feedback and suggestions as a follow-up.
First of all, we agree that respecting the "h" for the rough breathing mark that is no longer there, no longer seems to make sense and continues to be an out-dated practice. This system, however archaic as it may seem, is something we all seem to manage--there is a finite group of words that require the rough breathing. If it would help we could compile a list as an addendum to the existing tables. It should also be noted that there are still many modern Greek authors who intentionally write using polytonic Greek (which includes the rough breathing). Whatever decision is made we need to allow for this practice and prescribe how catalogers should handle it.

My feedback on proposed tables:

•  I think teasing out the Ancient and Medieval tables is appropriate, as well as giving Coptic its own table.
• The proposed table for Modern Greek (after 1453) appears to be taken from the ISO 843 1997 TR (transcription) and not from the ISO 843 TL (transliteration) table with a couple of exceptions: the I with a macron over it to represent eta and the O with the macron over it to represent omega. While the transcription table does an excellent job representing Greek as it sounds, it would require that the cataloger not just have a basic knowledge of modern Greek, but rather would require a high level of proficiency in the language. Even I, a proficient Greek speaker would need to constantly refer to the tables as I catalog. Of all our peer institutions, my cataloger is the only native Greek speaker. Our goal should be to simplify rather than to complicate. I think we should be thinking more in terms of how to take the existing tables, and work with the person whom I recommended at the University of Crete, Yannis Kosmas, who is confident that he could write a program that would respect the tables as they are now, and could do automated conversion to the roman script from the Greek. Most ILSs are now able to handle the various scripts and are actually cataloging in the vernacular. We are accepting copy but not doing original for the mere fact that the parallel fields will take more time that we cannot spare. If we could import Greek records and then press a button to create parallel transliterated fields this would be ideal.
• Absent this possibility, and only if there is *truly* a need to change the table, I would suggest that we open the discussion up to the cataloging and modern Greek studies communities, and determine whether it makes sense to use the ISO 843 1997 TL table (not the TR). This will provide a letter to letter correspondence, for ease of automated reversal, but does not represent how the language sounds. I am not sure how the community would react to this proposal, but my guess is that they may support it if it complies to international standards. For the comparison of the ISO 843 TR and TL tables,  I refer you to to Thomas T. Pedersen's transliteration web site, and specifically to his Greek tables where he compares various schemes: http://transliteration.eki.ee/pdf/Greek.pdf

I hope this summarizes what we discussed and please let me know if you have any questions or if we need further discussion.
Best wishes,
Rhea

Rhea K. Lesage
Head and Bibliographer for Modern Greek
Modern Greek Section
Collection Development Department
Widener Library
Harvard College Library
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617)495-3632
FAX (617)496-8704