THL Toolbox > Fonts & Related Issues > Tibetan Scripts, Fonts & Related Issues > THL's Online Tibetan Phonetics Converter
THL's Online Tibetan Phonetics Converter
This is an online service to be found at: 
http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/phconverter.php.
It is the THL endorsed way to generate easy to pronounce romanized transcriptions of Tibetan. It uses THL's own "THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan" system, which aims to create simplified romanized forms of Tibetan words that people can easily pronounce.
Instructions for Use
Paste your Tibetan text into the box in Unicode or Wylie, and click "Make Phonetics" or press Ctrl+Enter.
The are two settings that you can also adjust
Firstly you can specify word splitting. Tibetan language does not mark word boundaries, but rather only separates syllables. However, in popular romanized form, typically people prefer to have the syllables combined in meaningful ways into words. Thus "Tendzin Gyamtso", instead of ten dzin gya tso. In addition, there are certain changes in romanization that depend on which syllables go together. Hence treating the syllables separately yields gya tso, but when it is specified that the two syllables are part of one word, you get gyamtso.
Thus the program offers four ways to handle this problem:
- Use built-in word list: words are combined using a built-in list of Tibetan words.
- Handle each syllable separately: each syllable will be output separately with no combination into words.
- Syllables in a word joined by: this allows you to indicate a character - such as a hyphen - that you put between syllables that you want combined into a word. Thus bstan-'dzin rgya-mtsho yields Tendzin Gyamtso.
- Syllables in a word separated by: this allows you to indicate a character - such as a hyphen - between syllables that mark the juncture between words. . Thus bstan 'dzin-rgya mtsho yields Tendzin Gyamtso.
Please note that the last two options only work with romanized input, and do not work with Tibetan script. We are trying to figure out a method to address this limitation.
Secondly you can specify the type of transcription system you want to use in creating the output. This option is referred to as "Phonemic system." The choices are:
- THL Simplified Phonemic Transcription
- Rigpa English Phonetics
- Rigpa Spanish Phonetics
- Rigpa German Phonetics
Authorship
It was created by Roger Espel Llima and originally published at http://www.digitaltibetan.org/cgi-bin/phonetics.pl.
Provided for unrestricted use by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library