Title: Modern Romanization of Russian Toponyms per UN Technical Reference: Phonological and Orthographic Analysis

The paper investigates the issues of transliteration of Russian toponyms in a city environment and studies the efficiency of the Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names published by the United Nations group of experts. The paper demonstrates the feasibility of the UN and Russian official transliteration standards and compares the suggested theoretical models with the practical applications found on the street signs, labels, maps, and other sources of navigation. The author presents a comprehensive account of practical transcription methods used in Moscow and offers a solution to a number of issues and discrepancies between popular transliteration models and their real-life application.

public space where an area with one dominant language (Russian, in the case of this paper) is changed by an outside influence of other global languages (such as English)is the primary objective of research behind this paper, and an attempt is made to view how the combination of two languages in city texts can be achieved in the most optimal fashion to ensure error-free communication between native Russian speakers and foreigners. The practical side of the research and analyzed data are further described in section 2.0 below.
The navigational landscape of Moscow undergoes constant evolution under the supervision of the Russian capital's Department of Transportation and Development of the Road Transport Infrastructure (Bondar, Glukhov, & Goncharova, 2013). According to the overview published on the web-site of the Mayor's Office of Moscow, the reference concepts of the overall navigational architecture are described in the design document 'The Concept of the Unified Moscow City Navigation System,' initially published in 2013 and available for the general public on the Internet (Moscow Mayor official website, 2020). The website claims that '<the team working on the unified system of transport navigation> includes graphical and industrial designers, cartographers, analysts, editors and managers. Both Russian and international experts are continuously involved.' 1 One of the focal points of the city navigation emphasized in this paper is the standard of transliteration chosen for navigational texts. The aforementioned design document lists the official standard GOST 7.79-2000 as its guideline for transliteration (Interstate Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification, 2002). The said standard is based on an older document GOST 16876-71 approved in 1981 (USSR State Committee on Standards, 1981). However, the transliteration model suggested in GOST 7.79-2000 is intended for general use and doesn't take into account specific problems and challenges presented by navigational texts. The said model was not originally designed for use with toponymy in mind.
Another document that was based on the aforementioned GOST 16876-71 and used as a basis of transliteration for a multitude of global languages is the Technical Reference manual for the standardization of geographical names published by the United Nations in 2007 (United Nations Group of Experts on 1 '<В команду по разработке единой системы транспортной навигации> входят графические и промышленные дизайнеры, картографы, аналитики, редакторы и менеджеры. К работе над проектом постоянно привлекаются российские и мировые эксперты' [https://www.mos.ru/city/projects/design/] (translated by the author of this article) Geographical Names, 2007). Drawing upon GOST 16876-71, the Technical Reference manual gives recommendations on Romanization of the Russian language explicitly for geographical purposes. This document remains the sole system of Russian Romanization built and intended for use with geographical names. As such, the United Nations system remains high on the agenda to this day. Since the material in the United Nations manual closely coincides with the content of the modern GOST 7.79-2000, and in many instances the GOST 7.79-2000 standard mirrors the UN's suggestions, it is feasible to provide further analysis of the Technical Reference manual and compare its suggested rules for Russian and the way they are currently implemented in Moscow and other Russian cities for navigational purposes. Namely, the paper continues to explore the bilingual texts on city signs, translations of street names, objects of cultural and historical value, names of metro stations, and other city landscape messages, collectively referred to as 'urbanonyms.' Additionally, it is important to identify the disjunction between the system and methods currently applied in practice, and especially crucial to explain the basis behind such a disjunction. The paper identifies the most problematic examples of transliteration and proposes new approaches to convey certain letters of the Cyrillic alphabet based on extensive linguistic and sociolinguistic research.

Materials and methods
Following the principles of the UN Technical Reference in combination with currently established practical approaches, a system of practical transcription can be devised with a non-specialist in mind. Such a system is intended to be used for assisted city navigation purposes, where an English speaker without any prior knowledge of Cyrillic interacts with Russian speakers and Russian navigational texts to find their way in a Russian megapolis. For a system of that kind, it is less of a priority to ensure reversibility of transliteration, although reversibility can also be achieved through special means, such as introduction of auxiliary signs for specialists (e.g., interpuncts, vertical bars, diacritics) (Ivanov, 2017). Moreover, transliteration standards aren't usually well-known to casual users of any given language outside of the circle of experts, and their implementation is rarely controlled by the authorities or taught as part of education (Androutsopoulos, 2012). This leads the author to believe that, if a transliteration system such as UN's is to be used in real-life environment characterized by certain deeply-rooted practices and traditions of Romanization, it should be adapted to consider the needs of its end users and, most importantly, fitness for the practical task of ensuring safe navigation. To accomplish the correct and understandable conveyance of names of cultural importance, the paper relies on the principle of 3T -Translation, Transcription, Transliterationdeveloped specifically to take into account traditionally established ways of conveying culturally-relevant names and phonetic idiosyncrasies of lesser known toponyms (Souleimanova & Kholodova, 2014). To expand on this point, it is possible to subdivide the overall volume of Romanized texts, such as street names, into distinct categories. For example, a small subset of names has significant cultural value and international recognition, such as the names of the best-known tourist attractions and central objects of city toponymy, like Красная площадь -Red Square in Moscow. It is reasonable to translate such names literally, because the international community is generally aware of them through dictionary entries, history books, news channels, tour guides, cultural contacts, etc. To Romanize the rest of the names that do not have a comparable degree of recognition, it is important to combine the means of transcription and transliteration and produce a variant that resembles the original in both writing and pronunciation as closely as possible.
Application of the 3T principle is recommended through the method of iterative filtration which was implemented by the author during the work on the corpus of Moscow street names. The first step of iterative filtration is exclusion of names that do not pose a particular problem for Romanization, such as names consisting entirely of letters that all transliteration systems for a given language agree on (examples of such letters in Russian include А, М, Д, etc., as itemized below). The next step of the process is identification of each problematic letter that is conveyed differently depending on the system in place (see examples from the UN's Technical Reference manual in section 3.0). A prominent and common sign of a problematic letter is difference between its portrayal in an officially accepted transliteration system of a country or a city and the way it's written on actual maps and navigational signs throughout the country/city. For instance, certain combinations of Russian letters, such as -ИЙ at the end of an urbanonym, have been noticed to feature up to six different variants of transliteration in navigational texts, including -II, -IY, -YY, -Y, -YI, -YJ. Names containing such letters or combinations of letters are filtered out from the corpus and reviewed on a case by case basis. Every iteration focuses on a specific problem (for instance, differences in representing the 7 Russian letter Г and its corresponding sounds) and applies proposed principles of Romanization to suggest a way of circumventing the problem. The next iteration focuses on the names that either exhibit an entirely new problem (for instance, names with the letter Ё) or combine the problem from the first step and the next identified issue (such as names containing both Г and Ё). As such, every new step iterates upon the previous one and increases the complexity of the analysis by one level at a time. Iterations continue until there are no more names left in the corpus for analysis. This allows the researcher to organize the new dictionary of Romanized names in a logical and systematic manner (Souleimanova & Zots, 2019).
There is a number of letters in the Russian alphabet that have long-established equivalents in many transliteration systems due to a heavy resemblance between them and corresponding letters of the Latin alphabet, as well as similarities between sounds in Russian and English represented by such letters. Among

Romanization of Russian Г as G
Transliteration of the letter Г in English has been a subject of debates for over a century, with arguments both for and against a universal approach to its representation in literary pieces and, more importantly, geographical names. Noting the variety of sounds represented by this letter in Russian, in 1890 Charles E. Groves suggested using a 'rational' approach to represent it, which involves letters or groups of letters 'which have as nearly as may be the same sound as the original,' as opposed to an 'empirical' approach, in which 'little to no account is taken of the sound of the letters in the foreign language' (Groves, 1890 Lastly, the third instance of G is in a position before a consonant. The rules of the English language dictate that G in front of consonants is pronounced as [g] (except for the combination gn at the beginning of a word, e.g. gnu, gnome; as well as some borrowings from French, such as sovereignty, mignon, chignon, etc.; and a number of words featuring the combination gm that originate from the ancient Greek and came into English through Latin, e.g. syntagm, epiphragm, etc.). Consequently, the possibility of erroneous pronunciation in most of these cases is significantly lower. Consider Fig. 1, Fig. 2 for examples of the object names from city landscape. To add to that, the practical necessity of using GH at the end of words in the process of transcription or transliteration is low, as the analysis of the up-to-date corpus of street names in Moscow and Saint Petersburg demonstrated that there were no occurrences of the pair ГХ at the end of any street names in these two cities, and such a combination is generally rare in Russian. Examples of street names ending with Г include: улица Кашёнкин Луг -Kashonkin Lug Ulitsa, улица Балчуг -Balchug Ulitsa.
As a result, there are several ways to convey the Russian letter Г depending on the position it takes in a word and the surround sounds. See the summary in section 4.0, Table 1.

Romanization of Russian Е as E
When considering a way to represent the Russian letter Е, it is imperative to look at the position it takes in a given word. Similar to Г above, depending on its placement, the Russian Е can correspond to a number of sounds. The letter Е in Russian represents a combination of the palatal approximant [j] with the subsequent [e] in these cases: -When it is situated at the beginning of a word.
-When it follows a vowel.
-When it follows a hard (Ъ) or soft (Ь) separation sign.
In any other position, the letter Е corresponds to a single sound [e]. It should be noted that Е palatalizes the preceding hard consonant (e.g., небо [nʲebo]), but this change in pronunciation is not taken into account in the scope of this article for the purposes of a written practical transcription system.

Елизаровская -Yelizarovskaya.
It is worth noting that when a Russian word starts with E, its representation with a single Latin letter E could lead to a possible confusion with names that start with the letter Э (that also conveys a single sound [e]). Analysis of the names of geographical objects and streets in Moscow and Saint Petersburg shows that there are possible overlaps between homophonic names that begin with either Е or Э. One such example is the street Ереванская in Moscow and Эриванская in Saint Petersburg. While they exhibit a difference in spelling, they turn into homophones when transliterated by using the Russian Е->Latin E equivalent:

Erevanskaya (Ереванская) -Erivanskaya (Эриванская). In such circumstances the two-letter
representation YE is more reliable for the purpose of avoiding possible errors in oral communication, for instance when a foreign tourist asks a local person for directions. But given the geographical distance between these two streets, and also the general lack of geographic names that are only distinguishable by a single letter difference, it is reasonable to assume that the usage of YE is superfluous.
When Е follows a vowel (e.g., улица Волочаевская), several methods can be used to reflect the correctly deciphered by an equal number of respondents who were asked to read such street names aloud (Zots, 2016).
When Е follows a separation sign (e.g., улица Загорьевская), it is important to consider that some Russian streets sound similar to each other, with a separation sign making a noticeable distinction, for example улица Васильевскаяулица Маршала Василевского (with the word Маршала being attributed to several different streets named after various Russian marshals and thus often omitted in casual speech). In

this case, an indication of [je] becomes even more important and should not be neglected. Both options
Zagorjevskaya and Zagoryevskaya can be found on city signs, and the final decision should be made in consideration of the rest of the transliteration system, so that not to overuse either J or Y in digraphs corresponding to other sounds and letters.

Romanization of Russian Ё as Ё
When it comes to Ё, the same principles largely apply as with Е, since the two letters are similar in their pronunciation. and both consist of a palatal approximant [j] and a following vowel sound. However, another thing of note is the two dots above the letter that are outwardly similar to an umlaut in German, diaeresis in French, or diacritics in general, as present and recognizable in numerous world languages. While the double dots are not officially considered a diacritic in the Russian linguistic tradition, they are often confused with one by non-linguists.
This raises an important pointdue to the fact that letters with diacritics are absent from the Latin alphabet, they (and, by association, the letter Ё) can present a challenge to people whose mother tongue or primary language of communication is English. It could be seen as an advantage for a practical transcription system to only include such symbols that are present in the target languagein this case, English. Some recent examples of stepping away from diacritics in a modern day include the alternative transliteration

Romanization of Russian Ж as Ž
The current tradition of conveying the letter Ж in toponymy of surveyed Russian cities (including Moscow and Saint Petersburg) is twofold, with variants ZH and J equally represented in street names, metro stations, and titles of objects of urban infrastructure. Consider Fig. 3 and 4 for examples of names documented on the metro maps and street signs of the aforementioned cities.  At the same time, there's a special note accompanying the grapheme ZH: 'The spelling <zh> is also used to represent /ʒ/, but <...> it occurs only in transcriptions of Russian names, e.g. Zhivago, Zhores,' which signifies that the grapheme is familiar to native English speakers as a sign of Russian names and titles.
In the Russian language, letter Ж represents the sound [ʐ], which is similar to [ʒ] in European languages, but has a harder quality to it. Considering that and the fact that J mainly corresponds to [ʤ], it is recommended to use the grapheme ZH to represent the Russian letter Ж.

Romanization of Russian Ч as Č
Russian Ч is traditionally conveyed as CH, as witnessed in such transliteration systems as GOST  Figure 6. 2-й Зачатьевский переулок -2 nd Zachat'yevskiy side-street As with Ž above, the usage of Č comes with the disadvantage of not being represented in the Latin alphabet. In a user-oriented system that isn't solely intended for professional linguists, we believe CH to be a more intuitive option to pronounce correctly.

Romanization of Russian Ш as Š
Russian    The current tradition of city navigation texts does not reflect the recommendation to use ŠČ for Щ.
Instead, examples on Fig. 9, 10, 11, and 12 have been documented.    Besides, the variant SCH maintains overwhelming presence on the analyzed maps and other navigational messages, as indicated by collected evidence.

Romanization of Russian Ъ and Ь as " and ' respectively
While representation of the hard and soft sign as quotation marks is unambiguous, it rarely tells the reader how a given word should be pronounced. As a result, native readers without special knowledge or linguistic background often ignore the quotation marks entirely. A short survey among native English speakers conducted on an international web-forum reddit.com showed that, when asked to pronounce the street name Vasil'evskaya (a transliteration of the Russian name Васильевская), 25% of the 109 respondents did not articulate the quotation mark in any way, while the majority (47%) made a short pause after the letter L, which amounts to distinct pronunciation of two separate words (Vasil Evskaya) (Zots, 2016

Discussion
The conducted research demonstrates that the currently employed international transliteration practices for the Russian language are not sufficiently capable of forming a bilingual locus of a navigational landscape. Considering the mode of communication between the foreign tourists and native speakers, i.e. a short-term integration of foreigners into an unknown environment, cross-cultural communication takes form of an interpersonal contact, over the course of which a foreign visitor sends a message to the native Russian speaker by reading the Romanized information on a map or a sign. The ability to read the Romanized message, as well as the transliterated/transcribed text's resemblance to the sound of the original Russian message is crucial to achieve mutual understanding. The conclusions drawn upon each individual letter and its spoken representation are based first and foremost on this hypothetic social situation. As such, Romanization itself is understood as a process of combining the means of transliteration, transcription, and translation that considers the phonetic and alphabetic composition of a word and builds upon the practices of transliteration that are present in written documents and messages around a given city. This approach allows a researcher to utilize the experience of transliteration accumulated in a particular locale and further modify the resulted text to fit the needs of a concrete social group.
The critical analysis of phonological properties of Russian street names shows that neither the current tradition of their Romanization as presented on the street signs, nor the suggestions offered in the UN Technical Reference (and other similar transliteration systems, like GOST 16876-71, GOST 7.79-2000, etc., that follow the same approach) are fully suitable to ensure secure passage through Russian cities without knowledge of either the Russian language or, at the minimum, the Cyrillic alphabet. It is therefore practical to distance such Romanization methods from their scientific origins (that were first introduced to serve the needs of bibliographers and librarians) and instead concentrate on the practical needs of the general population and, primarily, non-linguists. The suggestions set forward in the section 3.0 are summed up in the following

Conclusions
In conclusion, for the Technical Reference system to be usable in an everyday environment by nonspecialists, it has to be adapted in consideration of already employed practices. The resulting system of practical transliteration should take into account its potential user base (specialists vs non-specialists in the science of language), the area of application (current navigational messages intended to appeal to mass audience or narrower use cases like specialized maps with reversibility in mind), and should consider every name on an individual basis, with the final decision delegated to the translator or translation committee working on a specific task.
The critical analysis of currently established practices and phonetic peculiarities of street names examined in this paper helps to identify some of the inconsistencies between the UN Technical Reference manual and other widely used transliteration systems and their practical everyday application. The conclusions drawn in the paper regarding each analyzed letter help to make a projection about the possible variants of Romanization of Cyrillic for the future application. Suggestions outlined in the paper can be extrapolated for use with new navigational messages in various cities of Russian Federation. Following the results of the presented research, it is possible to process any volume of city texts through the method of iterative filtration described in section 2.0. Further research of boundaries between languages in a translingual environment and their interaction are necessary to offer insights into linguistic, national, and cultural identity of a given city landscape.