Editing Transliteration (section)

==Definitions==
Systematic transliteration is a [[Map (mathematics)|mapping]] from one system of writing into another, typically [[grapheme]] to grapheme. Most transliteration systems are [[one-to-one correspondence|one-to-one]], so a reader who knows the system can reconstruct the original spelling.

Transliteration, which adapts written form {{em|without}} altering the pronunciation when spoken out, is opposed to letter [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcription]], which is a ''letter by letter conversion'' of one language into ''another writing system''. Still, most systems of transliteration map the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the target script, for some specific pair of source and target language. Transliteration may be very close to letter-by-letter transcription if the relations between letters and sounds are similar in both languages.

For many script pairs, there are one or more standard transliteration systems. However, unsystematic transliteration is common, as for [[Romanization of Burmese|Burmese]], for instance.