More on the problem of the transliteration of Cyrillic characters

Abstract

March 2005 saw the publication of the Italian translation of the February 1995 edition of the ISO 9 Norm: Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters: Slavic and non-Slavic languages that proposes a system for the transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic writing used by some both Slavic and non-Slavic languages.
Starting from an analysis of the norm, the differences with the 1968 edition and with the so-called scientific transcription are highlighted, so as to notice in what way the transliteration of Slavic languages written in Cyrillic characters has been applied both within the Italian academic setting (environment) and in that of libraries.
For this reason a review is done of all that is foreseen by the Italian cataloguing rules starting from the ones published in 1921 until the REICAT. In order to solve the differences that exist between the various transliterations historically used in our Italian cultural context, extensive use of postponements is suggested where there are various solutions for the transliteration of certain characters, so as to make the recovery of information more simple for users.