This encoding is based on the Library of Congress's transliteration scheme, which is used
to render Cyrillic book information in Latin letters, so it may be easily stored in the
library's catalogs. In general usage, LOC transliteration is NOT two-way. Although diacrytical
marks make it unambiguous when used strictly, it is common to write pseudo-LOC like this:
"Andrei poshel na obed." Here the Russian version is clear to a speaker, but not to a computer.
A system might incorrectly interpret the 'i' in 'Andrei' as a regular 'i', and not an 'i-kratkoe'.
The the 'yo' in 'poshel' is represented the same as a regular Cyrillic 'e' would be, so the
system might trip on this ambiguity as well. Because of this kind of ambiguity, it is necessary
to enforce some kind of markup to distinguish among Cyrillic characters that are frequently
represented identically in Latin text. You will find special markup for 'i-kratkoe', 'yo',
'hard e', and other characters in this encoding.
This encoding is one-way left-to-right because there are several characters that may
be represented in multiple ways on the left side of the transaction that have only a single
representation on the right side. For example, Cyrillic capital 'SH' can be represented
in Latin characters as both 'SH' and 'Sh'. A conversion from Cyrillic to Latin using
this encoding would encounter an ambiguity transliterating this type of character.
a
b
v
g
d
e
\e
zh
z
i
\i
k
l
m
n
o
p
r
s
t
u
f
kh
t^s
ch
sh
shch
\"
y
\'
\.e
iu
ia
A
B
V
G
D
E
\E
ZH
Z
I
\I
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
F
KH
T^S
T^s
CH
Ch
SH
Sh
SHCH
Shch
\."
Y
\.'
\.E
IU
Iu
IA
Ia
"
'