WFGY/ProblemMap/GlobalFixMap/LanguageLocale/transliteration_and_romanization.md

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Transliteration & Romanization — Global Fix Map

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You are in a sub-page of LanguageLocale.
To reorient, go back here:

Think of this page as a desk within a ward.
If you need the full triage and all prescriptions, return to the Emergency Room lobby.

Stabilize queries when users type Pinyin/Romaji/IAST/RTGS/Buckwalter variants instead of native scripts.
Use this page to bridge native-script ↔ romanized forms for retrieval, ranking, and reasoning without changing infra.


What this page is

  • A compact repair guide for script-to-roman mismatches in RAG and search.
  • Concrete schema rules and query tactics that unify multiple romanization systems per language.
  • Exact jump links to structural fixes so you can verify with measurable targets.

When to use

  • Users type Pinyin with tone marks vs numbers or ad-hoc English spellings.
  • Japanese Hepburn vs Kunrei differences (“shi/si”, “tsu/tu”; macron “ō” vs “ou”).
  • Korean Revised RR vs McCune-Reischauer (“Busan/Pusan”, “Jeju/Cheju”).
  • Arabic/Persian DIN/Buckwalter/ad-hoc (“Muhammad/Mohamed/Mohammad”).
  • Cyrillic names produce Čajkovskij/Chaikovsky/Tchaikovsky style drift.
  • Greek/Indic/Vietnamese diacritics collapse or fold in unpredictable ways.
  • Native pages index fine, yet romanized queries miss or rank poorly.

Open these first


Acceptance targets

  • ΔS(question, retrieved) ≤ 0.45 on three paraphrases.
  • Coverage of target section ≥ 0.70.
  • λ remains convergent across two seeds.
  • Cross-script parity: romanized query recall ≥ 0.90 of native-script recall on your gold set.

Common failure patterns → exact fix

  • Romanization system mismatch (e.g., Hepburn vs Kunrei, RR vs MR, DIN vs ad-hoc).
    Lock a canonical key and index both forms.
    Open: retrieval-playbook.md, data-contracts.md

  • Tone marks vs numbers in Pinyin (“lǐ/lĭ/li3”).
    Add a tone-stripped key and a numeric-tone key, dedupe at index time.
    Open: diacritics_and_folding.md

  • Macrons and long vowels in Romaji (“ō/oo/ou”).
    Normalize to a canonical long-vowel key and store alternates.
    Open: data-contracts.md

  • Arabic definite article or spacing drift (“al Riyadh/Ar-Riyāḍ/Riyadh”).
    Strip articles into a side key; keep original for display.
    Open: retrieval-traceability.md

  • Query parsing split under hybrid retrievers when romanized variants explode terms.
    Pin two-stage queries and rerank deterministically.
    Open: pattern_query_parsing_split.md, rerankers.md


60-second fix checklist

  1. Measure ΔS and λ
    Compute ΔS(question, retrieved). If ΔS ≥ 0.60 and λ flips on small romanization edits, treat as schema/index mismatch.

  2. Add a Romanization Bridge (store-agnostic)

  • For each document and title, compute and store:
    • key_native = original script
    • key_roman_primary = your chosen canonical system per language
    • key_roman_alt[] = enumerated alternates (e.g., Hepburn/Kunrei, RR/MR, DIN/ad-hoc, Pinyin tone/number)
  • Index key_native and key_roman_* in the same record; dedupe by stable doc_id.
  • At query time, expand to canonical plus alternates, then rerank.
  1. Lock the contract
    Require fields in the snippet payload:
    lang, script, roman_system, key_roman_primary, key_roman_alt, source_url, offsets.
    See: data-contracts.md

  2. Probe robustness
    Run a three-paraphrase test: native script, canonical romanization, alternate romanization.
    Targets must meet Acceptance.


Minimal per-language mapping hints

  • Chinese: tone marks ↔ numeric tones; collapse üv in legacy inputs.
  • Japanese: macron ō/ūou/oo/uu; “shi/si”, “ji/zi”, “chi/ti”, “tsu/tu”; small “っ/tsu” doubling.
  • Korean: RR ↔ MR pairs (“Busan/Pusan”, “Jeju/Cheju”, “Gyeong/ Kyŏng”).
  • Arabic/Persian: articles al-/el- optional; hamza/ta marbuta variants; DIN ↔ Buckwalter map.
  • Indic (IAST/ISO/Harvard-Kyoto): ś/ṣ/ñ/ṭ/ḍsh/sh/ny/t/d.
  • Cyrillic: Ч/чCh/Č, Ю/юYu/Iu, etc., preserve soft sign loss with an alternate key.
  • Greek: ΜιχάληςMichalis/Michales; handle mp/nt digraphs.

Document your choices inside roman_system so audits are reproducible.


Copy-paste prompt (LLM step)


You have TXT OS and the WFGY Problem Map loaded.

My multilingual issue:

* symptom: romanized queries miss or rank poorly vs native script
* traces: ΔS(question,retrieved)=..., λ states across native/roman/alternate

Tell me:

1. which layer is failing and why,
2. the exact WFGY page to open,
3. the minimal Romanization Bridge to add (keys + query expansion),
4. how to verify with coverage ≥ 0.70 and ΔS ≤ 0.45 across three paraphrases.
   Reference: retrieval-playbook, retrieval-traceability, data-contracts, diacritics\_and\_folding.


Next planned file in LanguageLocale/

  • mixed_numeric_systems.md ← numbers written in native digits vs ASCII, year/era systems, and counters.

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