Transliteration of Persian Names at the National Library of Iran: Comparison with National and International Standards

This paper reports a research that has examined the extent that transliteration of Persian proper names at the National Library of Iran (NLI) complies with the national and international standards.

Data was collected from NLI Authority database and compared with existing standards.

On the average, the letters "ص" and "ظ" show highest level of compliance with the standards, whereas the letter "ع" shows the least. The corporate body and geographic authority files were found to be more in compliance than the Personal names one. Also, short vowels were more in line with the standards than the long vowels.

Unavailability of a manual that helps transliteration is a shortcoming. As a result, catalogers have generally relied on their variant personal experience and/or trusted forms proposed by unauthorized sources such translators, authors, or publishers.