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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand

Volume XVI-2024 (Special Issue)

French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, and Malay, which were announced on

March 5, 1992 (Royal Gazette, Volume 108, Part 56, Page 1, May 1, 1992). During the years 2010
to 2018, there were announcements of the criteria for transliteration of many new languages

and many newly revised languages: French, Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Burmese
(Myanmar), Malay, German, Spanish, and Indonesian.

Currently, the Royal Society continues to establish the criteria for transliteration of many
more languages for the benefit of communication in today’s world. These transliteration
criteria are used in government affairs. Other agencies or the general public who wish to use

these transliteration criteria can also do so. These include foreign agencies stationed in Thailand,
such as embassies, which can also use these principles when they wish to write geographical

names or personal names in Thai script.

Transliteration of Thai script into Roman script

Transliteration of Thai script into Roman script is another type of academic work that
the Royal Society initiated in 1927.

There are three terms related to transliteration: transliteration, transcription, and
Romanization.

Transliteration is the process of converting alphabets from one language into another
language, without considering pronunciation. Such conversion can be done between alphabets

in any system. For example, the English word ‘man’ can be transliterated into the Thai alphabet
‘มแน’ by using ม instead of m, แ instead of a, and น instead of n. If the Thai letter in the word
‘แมน’ is to be transliterated into Roman script, it must be written as ‘amn’ by using “a” instead

of “แ,” “m” instead of “ม,” and “n” instead of “n.”
Transcription is the use of symbols to represent sounds or groups of sounds. For example,

‘แมน’ uses phonetic letters and is transliterated as [mæn].
Romanization is the use of Roman letters to replace letters in other languages, assuming

that Roman letters can represent the sounds of that language. For example, the word ‘แมน’
can be transliterated as ‘maen.’

The work of the Royal Society is to convert Thai alphabets into Romanization /Romanized
transliteration.
The idea of transliterating Thai script into Roman script began during the reign of

King Rama V around 1908. At that time, there was a problem with writing geographical names on
maps, which Thailand made together with England and France. They came to an agreement to

create a writing system that used Roman letters to represent the pronunciation of Thai names.
This system focused on the pronunciation only without considering the form of writing. It was

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