THE JABALÍN TRANSLITERATION SYSTEM

The Jabalín project includes the creation of a transliteration system for representing Arabic characters using latin characters. A transliteration is a one-to-one mapping of all the characters used in a language to a well defined set of symbols selected from a different writing system. In the field of Arabic language processing, the Buckwalter transliteration system has achieved wide acceptance in recent years. It has the advantage of being widely portable, since it consists only of ascii characters. Unfortunately, it also contains non-letter symbols and turns out to be very difficult to read, even for the Arabic expert. For this reason, we created a new transliteration system for the Arabic language, trying to respect the principles of portability and readability as much as possible.

The Jabalín Transliteration Chart

Arabic	Name of letter	Buckwalter	Jabalín	Unicode Jabalín character
ء	isolated hamza	'	c	0x621
آ	alif mamduda	|	Ã	0x622
أ	hamza above alif	>	Á	0x623
ؤ	hamza above waw	&	ú	0x624
إ	hamza below alif	<	À	0x625
ئ	hamza above ya	}	ý	0x626
ا	alif	A	A	0x627
ب	ba	b	b	0x628
ة	ta marbuta	p	ä	0x629
ت	ta	t	t	0x62a
ث	tha	v	þ	0x62b
ج	jim	j	j	0x62c
ح	Ha	H	H	0x62d
خ	kha	x	x	0x62e
د	dal	d	d	0x62f
ذ	dhal	*	ð	0x630
ر	ra	r	r	0x631
ز	zay	z	z	0x632
س	sin	s	s	0x633
ش	shin	$	X	0x634
ص	Sad	S	S	0x635
ض	DaD	D	D	0x636
ط	Ta	T	T	0x637
ظ	Dha	Z	Z	0x638
ع	'ayn	E	ç	0x639
غ	gayn	g	g	0x63a
ف	fa	f	f	0x641
ق	qaf	q	q	0x642
ك	kaf	k	k	0x643
ل	lam	l	l	0x644
م	mim	m	m	0x645
ن	n	n	n	0x646
ه	ha	h	h	0x647
و	waw	w	w	0x648
ى	alif maqsura	Y	Y	0x649
ي	ya	y	y	0x64a
َ	fatha	a	a	0x64e
ُ	damma	u	u	0x64f
ِ	kasra	i	i	0x650
ً	double fatha	F	â	0x64b
ٌ	double damma	N	û	0x64c
ٍ	double kasra	K	î	0x64d
ّ	shadda	~	~	0x651
ْ	sukun	o	·	0x652
ـ	tatweel or kashida	_	¯	0x640