Talk:Volapuk encoding

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This article was nominated for deletion on March 11, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Cyrillic in Wikipedia 2 translit? 3 SMS & stuff 3.1 Variants 4 Half-rewrite 5 ?? term mixing ?? 6 Wrong term 7 Pseudostandards 8 False Term for Russian 9 Same observation for Greek

[edit] Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:45 Z

[edit] translit?

i have never heard anyone refer to this method of writing as "volapuk encoding." everyone says translit. i think that these two articles need to be merged, with translit being the main name. —lensovet–talk – 01:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it should be merged. It's one topic with two names. We should go with whichever one is most popular among people who actually use it. What is it in the Russian, Bulgarian, etc., versions of Wikipedia? --Cbdorsett 05:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I found the answer to that myself (the second part, anyway): Slovenian uses Volapuk, and Russian uses Translit. I'll ask a few people here at work - several of the programmers are Russian. --Cbdorsett 05:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, that was easy enough. Two Russian programmers say that everyone uses the term "translit" and neither had heard of Volapuk being used for anything other than the constructed language. Before I cast my vote one way or the other, however, I'd like to hear from speakers of other languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet. I'd also like to hear from speakers of Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet. --Cbdorsett 05:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no, no. You are all wrong :) I have updated the article, so I hope now it will be clear what is Volapuk and how it differs from Translit. Read a least the first paragraph and compare letters IN THE TABLE. :) 213.141.137.47 11:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

It is considered a vulgar, cheap SMS-driven take on translit (latin text messages have historically cost less and been more universally supported by all phones). Most consider it a nuisance, as it is generally used by those too lazy to learn the conventions of translit, and looks quite horrid to many. However, I have yet to hear it called Volapuk, perhaps because it is currently favoured by those of lower education and social status (reluctance to learn translit, cheap non-cyrillic phones), and is written intuitively, rather than by any known or documented rule. Indeed, few if any of its adherents know that it has a name. 128.195.186.63 18:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)Adieu

[edit] SMS & stuff

The following pieces removed from article as nonreliable.

Also sometimes called "Moldavskiy" (Moldavian) language, like in "Davay po moldavski" (Let's talk Moldavian, possibly due to Latin alphabet use in Moldavia) or "Metodievica" (Methodic), especially in Bulgaria (after St. Methodius, one of the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet).

However, the rapid spread of cellphones, especially among young people, created a new home for Volapuk. Until 2000—2001, very few cellphones imported into Russia had support for Cyrillic characters in SMS messages. Over the following five years the situation improved dramatically, and now most of the mobile devices in Russia have full support for Cyrillic messaging. Nonetheless, Volapuk is still popular, especially among school and college students, because of the price (messages containing even one Cyrillic character cost twice as much as fully Latin messages; the explanation is that the standard message body can contain 160 Latin symbols, but Cyrillic letters are "coded" with two bytes, so that message size is limited to 70 Cyrillic symbols). This price difference made "volapukization" even more obscure, because people not only transliterate Russian words to Latin script, but also abbreviate them chaotically, and change Russian words to (generally shorter) English equivalents. This resulted in a vocabulary reminiscent of leetspeak (see example SMS message below). ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Variants

Some consider it a kind of joke to systematically substitute Cyrillic letters with Latin ones that look the same, rather than sound the same. In certain cases it leads to collisions, e.g., in the case of P and R vs. Cyrillic П (Pe) and Р (Er).

Example of a typical SMS message:

• Xai Hat! skazu bcem 4to 9 ne npudy. Dabai bctpet cy6 7ve4era.9 lav tebya. ("advanced" volapuk—the goal was to compact the message down to 70 symbols!)
• Привет, Наташа. Скажи всем, что я не приду. Давай встретимся в субботу в 7 вечера. Я люблю тебя. (Cyrillic, standard Russian)
• Hi, Natasha. Skazhi vsem, chto ya ne pridu. Davay vstretimsya v subbotu v 7 vechera. Ya love tebya. (transliteration; notice occasional English)
• Hi Natasha, tell everyone that I'm not going to come. Let's meet on Saturday, 7PM. I love you. (English)

`'mikka 20:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Half-rewrite

I have half-rewrited the article itself, added better explanations and rules how the volapuk is formed, added some examples, cleaned some garbage. The table is accurate as I updated it before.

I hope now the article is clear.

I also wanted to add that Volapuk is absolutly not the same as Translit, just read the first paragraph and look at the table: it compares the Translit, Cyrillic and Volapuk letters. 213.141.137.47 11:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit]  ?? term mixing ??

In most cases the volapuk = translit, because translit common usage hasn't strict rules. For the other hand, for example, the 'LLI=Ш' noted is rather "Hackerization", than something else. Under the name it was very popular since early 1990'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.67.64.199 (talk • contribs)

The term Volapuk encoding has no notability in Russian, there is no corresponding article in ru.wiki though this phenomenon is well known (but volapuk does not belongs to terms used to describe it, pseudotranslit does).

Concerning Volapuk encoding#References. One Russian link leads to the site botik.ru, which is not a notable site in Russian Internet. And I'm not sure that the document (BTW dated 1997) mentions the discussed sort of transliteration, not usual latin (phonetical) translit.

The book of Frolov contain such a definition of volapuk encoding:

Еще одна головная боль — так называемая кодировка Волапюк, или латиница. При ее использовании русские символы заменяются латинскими, имеющими схожее начертание или произношение.

(Another headache is the so named Volapuk encoding, or latin script. Using it, Russian characters have to be replaced with latin ones, having similar graphical representation or pronunciation.)

This quote completely discards the theory about Volapuk encoding as a well-defined term in Russian computer slang.

IMHO all the article is an original research, and particulary its name. гык 22:34, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

ъ? How come is "discards", if it was an "another headache", implying it was so widespread as to cause quite a nuisance? `'юзырь:mikka 00:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Here, "headache" translates to pain in the ass / pointlessly exhausting activity. The above passage clearly describes it as a quaint nuiscance.

It's like reverse R's and N's used as "ya" and "ie" and faux umlauts used in the English language... except, imagine these abberations being every second letter in the text, not standardized, and without any concept of 1 letter = 1 symbol OR 1 sound = 1 symbol, without rules, without exceptions... At least 12 of 26 standard Roman letters are at times read visually rather than phonetically, *and only in some cases*. It reads like a cypher. Slowly and laboriously, you might even unravel the enigma of the individual message eventually, although confusion and misunderstanding are nearly guaranteed. On the other hand, misreading translit is quite difficult, and crucial yet unverifiable dual interpretations either never arise or are uniquely rare in proper translit. 128.195.186.25 18:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)Adieu

However the main problem with the current article is that it fails to notice that the term fell into disuse quite severely. I suspect the term is not searchable by google because russian electronic texts from these (not so) old times are not carefully archived, being of little economical importance. `'юзырь:mikka 00:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, the article must be severely trimmed, to remove original research. `'юзырь:mikka 00:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. Better less than never :-) `'юзырь:mikka 01:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Russian "graphical" trasliterations (like given in Volapuk encoding) are used (e.g. by gamers in nicks and console chat), but volapuk encoding is an obsolete term (originating from slang of some computermen of early 1990s, never put in the common use), even never used specifically for graphical transliteration. The notion of graphical trasliteration lacks a good unambiguous term in Russian, IMHO we should not port a highly doubtful etymology to English. гык 05:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong term

Crap :). I have conducted some research and found that actually Volapuk is just another type of Translit. The article simply tries to describe something under wrong term :(. The problem rise: there is NO common term for this. The subject itself is very simple, well-known but very rarely used, hence no common term for this. I have heard: "pseudotranslit", "russian translit", "wrong translit", "reverse translit", "cyrillic but in latin letters" and many others. I think term "Pseudotranslit" suits the best.

Another problem is that the article Faux Cyrillic at 70% consists of description for Pseudotranslit (actually the opposite term), under the section ""Real" Cyrillic written with Latin typefaces". This content should be also moved into renamed article.

So, I suggest to rename it to "Pseudotranslit" and restore contents describing new term (because the intended contents (for term "Volapuk encoding") should describe already existing Translit). I hope this will be ok. 213.141.137.47 03:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

"Pseudotranslit" has no reliable references, suitable for wikipedia. I am thinking about killing Volapuk encoding as well. Let it sit for a while, but definitely you cannot expand it unless you nave more references. `'юзырь:mikka 03:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudostandards

Some Russian e-mail providers even included Volapuk encoding in the list of available options for the e-mails routed abroad, e.g., "MIME/BASE64, MIME/Quoted-Printable, volapuk, uuencode[1] had "pseudostandards" different from Russian ones.

This sentence is a bit confusing, and the quotation marks are not nested. Needs clarification, if someone can figure out precisely what it's saying. —Michael Z. 2007-06-18 15:56 Z

Obviously careless editing (cutting/pasting). In such cases it is advised to look into page history. `'юзырь:mikka 18:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Oops. it was mine. Pasted the same piece into two places. `'юзырь:mikka 18:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] False Term for Russian

Small Text Search in yandex.ru , a leading Russian search engine, gives a top 10 from an obscure music artist and 18 searches per month. Searching +Volapuk +Translit shows some residual and mostly dated confusion between the terms, but it is Translit that has survived as an umbrella term. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.195.186.25 (talk) 19:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Same observation for Greek

Hi, I found the same kind of "optical" transcoding with greek songs when saved as mp3 file: XAIPH, AGAPH MOU, X = chi, H = ita; P = rho etc.