ISO 11940 pdf download.Information and documentation — Transliteration of Thai
1 Scope
This International Standard establishes a system for the transliteration 1) of Thai characters into Roman characters. One set of rules is provided for a completely reversible stringent conversion where principles of transliteration are applied without exception. This Romanized transliteration system is a means of converting the Thai writing system into a Roman alphabet writing system. Since there are fewer Roman characters than Thai characters, diacritical marks, punctuation marks, and a combination of two Roman characters, or a digraph, are needed to represent one Thai character. The aim of this system is to provide a means of international communication of written messages in a form which permits the automatic transmission or reconstitution of these by men or machines. This system of conversion is intended to provide complete and unambiguous reversibility. It is possible that the results obtained from this system will not provide for correct pronunciation of the original Thai text. However, they will serve as a means of finding the Thai graphisms automatically and thus to allow anyone with a knowledge of Thai to pronounce the Thai text correctly. An attempt to transpose a preposed vowel after an initial consonant may comfort those who are used to the Roman writing system where a vowel always follows a consonant to form a syllable, unless it is a syllable without an initial. It is best to leave the preposed vowel in the Thai transliteration system where it is, because a transliteration system is not a transcription system. Capital letters are reserved for writing the initial in proper nouns. It is unwise to make use of capital letters in the transliteration system for certain characters, otherwise common nouns and proper nouns cannot be distinguished from one another. This system is based on phonetic logic in the selection of transliterated representations, as much as possible, in order to lessen the burden on those who wish to learn the system.
2 Normative reference
The following standard contains provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of this International Standard. At the time of publication, the edition indicated was valid. All standards are subject to revision, and parties to agreements based on this International Standard are encouraged to investigate the possibility of applying the most recent edition of the standard indicated below. Members of IEC and ISO maintain registers of currently valid International Standards. ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, Information Technology — Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) — Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane.
3 Definitions
For the purposes of this International Standard, the following definitions apply. 3.1 characters: Alphabetic letters, digits, special markers, and other markers. 3.2 Thai characters: Thai alphabetic letters, Thai digits, and special markers which are divided into the following:3.3 special symbols: Refers to the four symbols used to differentiate one Roman character that represents the same sound converted from different Thai characters:
This International Standard is one of a series of International Standards, dealing with the conversion of systems of writing. The aim of this International Standard and others in the series is to provide a means for international communication of written messages in a form which permits the automatic transmission and reconstitution of these by men or machines. The system of conversion, in this case, must be univocal and entirely reversible. This means that no consideration should be given to phonetic and aesthetic matters nor to certain national customs : all these considerations are, indeed, ignored by the machine performing the function. The adoption of this International Standard for international communication leaves every country free to adopt for its own use a national standard which may be different, on condition that it be compatible with the International Standard. The system proposed herein should make this possible and be acceptable to international use if the graphisms it creates are such that they may be converted automatically into the graphisms used in any strict national system.