Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com FM 34-54 TRANSLITERATION: Figure G-5 shows the different forms of the Cyrillic alphabet for five principal Cyrillic alphabet languages and the recommended transliterations for each letter. Pay particular attention to the transliteration of Russian. These equivalents must be used when reporting on materiel bearing Russian nameplates. DO NOT REPORT ON FOREIGN EQUIPMENT AND DOCUMENTS USING THE ORIGINAL CYRILLIC CHARACTER. The Figure classifies each letter as "C" for consonant or "N" for nonconsonant. RUSSIAN: Russian is the most frequently encountered Cyrillic alphabet language and should always be the prime suspect.
The key to recognizing Russian is the fact that it uses both letter 12 and letter 39 and does not use letter 13 at all. (See Figure G-5.) BULGARIAN: Bulgarian is perhaps the second most frequently encountered Cyrillic alphabet language and the most difficult for the nonspecialists to differentiate from Russian. Bulgarian uses fewer letters than Russian. NOTE: In the following discussion, the letters are referred to by their numbers on the chart in Figure G-5. For example, a letter used often in Russian and never in Bulgarian is the letter 39; however, the way to be sure that it is not Bulgarian is to see if the letter 38 comes before a consonant or "C" letter.
Note that letter 38 is frequent in Bulgarian and rare in Russian; moreover, when letter 38 occurs in Russian, it always occurs before an "N" letter. Proper transliteration is very important. When an analyst reads a Russian nameplate and writes down P-105A, but it is actually an R-105D (P is not P, rather "R," and is wrongly symbolized by A); then it results in incorrect reporting. The column in Figure G-5 marked "Other" is not supplied with any transliteration equivalents. This column contains similar letters that are encountered in the written languages of various minority nationalities in the former USSR.
These languages belong mainly to the Uralic family or the Altaic family, and a Russian linguist will be unable to make any sense out of them. Recognition of any documents in these languages as non-Slavic is a helpful first step in DOCEX. G-11