A Comparison between Rule and Dictionary Based Romanization of Arabic Names

Romanization is used to phonetically translate names and technical terms from languages in non-Roman alphabets to languages in Roman alphabets. Because almost all dictionaries contain standard English forms for some Arabic names, this problem has been solved using machine transliteration. Several programs exist to deal with transliteration; they are based either on dictionary-based approach or on rule-based approach. In this study, a comparison between these two approaches is shown. Test data from the Yarmouk University library were used. Results show that while a rule-based Romanizer can romanize all names, a dictionary-based Romanizer romanizes (86%) of tested names. On the other hand, another kind of test was performed over the Romanization rules used by each Romanizer; the results show that the Romanization rules (in terms of accuracy and usability) used by the Dictionary-based Romanizer used in this study are better than the ones used by Rule-based Romanizer.