Everything about Runic Transliteration And Transcription totally explained
Runic transliteration and transcription are part of analysing a
runic inscription. Usually scholars both
transliterate the runes into Latin letters,
transcribe into a normalized spelling in the language of the inscription and translate the inscription into the language they write in.
There is a long standing practice to write transliterations in
boldface and to transcribe the text in
Italic type since the two forms of rendering a runic text have to be kept distinct.
Overview
By not only showing the original inscription, but also transliterating, transcribing and translating, scholars present the analysis in a way that allows the reader to follow their interpretation of the runes. Every step has its challenges, but most
Younger Futhark inscriptions are quite easy to interprete. Most Scandinavians can learn to read runic inscriptions with a little training. The
Elder Futhark inscriptions, however, are much more challenging and they demand a great deal of knowledge in historical linguistics. Standard works such as
Sveriges runinskrifter contain extensive presentations of the ways inscriptions have been interpreted throughout the centuries.
Runes
It is practically impossible to render the runes in all the various ways that they appear in the inscriptions, and so the way they look has to be presented in pictures and in drawings.
Transliteration
Transliteration means that the runes are represented by a corresponding Latin letter in
bold. No consideration is given to the sound the rune represented in the actual inscription, and a good example of this is the
ansuz rune, which could vary greatly in shape. In the oldest Younger Futhark inscriptions, it always represented a nasal a, as in French
an, but later it came to represent other phonemes such as /o/. However, some
runemasters continued to use the ansuz rune for an
a phoneme. The ansuz rune is always transliterated as
o from the Younger Futhark, and consequently, the transliteration
mon represents Old Norse
man in
a runestone from Bällsta, and
hon represents Old Norse
han in the
Frösö Runestone, while
forþom represents Old Norse
forðom in an inscription from Replösa.
Sometimes the runes are "dotted" which means that a dot has been added, and in transliterations dotted runes are treated differently from ordinary runes. Dotted
u,
k and
i are transliterated as
y,
g and
e in spite of the fact that they're rather variations of the non-dotted runes than runes in their own right.
s are marked with an arch. Some bind runes look in a way that makes it impossible to know which rune preceded the other, and then the scholar has to test the various combinations that give a comprehensible word. Thus all transliterations of bind runes are scholarly interpretations.
Runes that are known from older depictions but that have since disappeared are rendered within square brackets.
Transcription or normalization
The runes are transcribed into normalized spellings of the languages the runes were written in, and normalizations are rendered with italics. Since a single rune may represent several different phonemes, normalizations can differ greatly from transliterations. The
þ rune can represent both the Old Norse letter
ð (as in English
the) or
þ (as in English
thing).
Notes and references
Further Information
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