Instruction On Transliteration of Belarusian Geographical Names With Letters of Latin Script

Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script is an officially adopted method of Romanisation of the Belarusian Cyrillic text in geographical names. It was adopted by the decree of the State Committee on land resources, geodetics and cartography (2000-11-23). The official name of the document is: Russian: «Инструкция по транслитерации географических названий Республики Беларусь буквами латинского алфавита». The document had been published in the National registry of the judicial acts of the Republic Belarus (issue №3, 2001-01-11).

It is reported in the press that since October 2006 this instruction is recommended for use by the Working Group on Romanization Systems of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). The final decision of the UN was planned for a 2007 conference.

The system was modified again on 11 June 2007, mainly in order to conform with the recommendations of the UN WGRS, which advise avoiding the use of digraphs if possible, and adopted by the UN in version 3.0 of their romanization report, 17 March 2008.. The 2007 modification brought the transliteration standard maximally close to the currently unofficial Belarusian latin alphabet.

The instruction replaces the previous equivalent regulations and sets up the rules of the rendering of the Belarusian geographical names, which are mandatory on the Republic Belarus territory, when producing the cartographic and other (equivalent?) goods, destined for the international use.

The Belarusian names are romanised in their modern, correct, officially approved form. When the appropriate official materials in Belarusian are absent, the names traditional for the target language are to be used as the basis.

These rules are not applicable to the place names of the bordering countries with the officially Latin-based writing systems (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia) and to the place names of the bordering countries with the officially Cyrillic-based writing systems (Russia, Ukraine).

When choosing on the capital or small letters, on writing parts of the name separately, on writing the name with the dash, the Belarusian orthography's choice on such issues is to be preserved.

The letters with diacriticals or without them are considered equivalent and are sorted according to the letters succeeding them in the word.

Two diacritical signs are used:

• háček (ˇ), U+030C
• acute accent (’), U+0301, combined only with Cc, Ll, Nn, Ss, Zz or U+OOB4, non-combined.

Notes:

* In the beginning of the word, after the vowels or the apostrophe or the separating soft sign or the «short U».

** After the consonants.

The initial 2000 version differed from the above: ў = ú, ь = ’ (apostrophe; e.g., дзь = dz’, зь = z’, ль = l’, нь = n’, сь = s’, ць = c’)