Modularized Transliteration Engine

The eXtensible Transliteration Framework (XTF) is used to automate a system of rules to convert a word or text written in one writing system into another. In a broader sense, the XTF can be utilized for either transliteration by defining complex conventions for dealing with letters in a source script that do not correspond with letters in a target script, or transcription by mapping sounds of one language to the script of another language. XTF provides an extensible, declarative Extensible Markup Language (XML) framework to easily automate existing mapping systems such as those defined by US Board on Geographic Names and British Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (BGN/PCGN), American Library Association & Library of Congress (ALA-LC) Romanization and United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). At the core, XTF extends the International Components for Unicode (ICU) transliteration services by providing an XML definition language, and editing and verification utilities. The XTF implements an Open Architecture approach by mapping between encodings, supporting pluggable transliteration engines, and providing multiple language Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Phase I demonstrated the dynamic transliteration of place names within a Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping application by using the XTF API.