ศาลาชุมนุม

Hello,

Do we know about this? I have just found it.

http://161.200.50.2/th2roman

It's an online tool by Chulalongkorn University that does Thai-to-roman transliterations (plus various other functions like Thai-to-IPA; syllables; Parts-of-Speech; etc. - see the 'menus' at the top of the page).

There are also downloadable versions of it (for offline use):
http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~awirote/res ... ation.html
http://pioneer.chula.ac.th/~awirote/res ... ption.html

What do we think about it?

I ran a few 'ordinary' phrases through it and (other than the fact that it uses /c/ for จ) it seemed to work OK.

..

I also ran my temple names through it,
http://www.thai-language.com/forums/t/translation/basic/t15735
... but found a few discrepencies with what I would expect.

These few seem like plain system-errors:

Name…… | I woulda thought | Chula tool says
---------------------------------------------------------------
วัดสาลโคดม | Wat Sala Khodom | wat san kho dom
วัดไทร | Wat Sai | wat thrai
วัดชลอน | Wat Chalon | wat chon on
วัดทองครุ | Wat Thong Kru | wat thong kharu
วัดสกิตย์วฌขาราม | Wat sakit wat tha ka ram | wat sakit chakha ram

.

But with these I'm not sure who is wrong - it or me. Any pointers?

Name…… | I woulda thought | Chula tool says | My Comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
วัดกำแพล | Wat kamphaen | wat kam phlae | consonant cluster or not?(Phae is ‘raft’, but what about that terminal ล)
วัดราหุลคงนิมิต | Wat rahun khong ni mit | wat rahu lakhong nimit | 'hun' vs. 'hu la' (the chula tool parses it differently from thai-language.com)
วัดโพธิลังการ์ | Wat Pho ti lang ka | wat phot lang ka | Chlula discards the 'ti'.( btw, most Wat Phos have a garaan over ธิ์ but this one didn’t).
วัดทองแท่งนิสยาราม | Wat thong thaeng ni sa ya ram | wat thongthaeng nit ya ram | sa ? (both chula and Thai-langauge parse this as ‘nit ya’)
วัดธรรมจักรสิทธาราม | Wat tam chakra sit tha ram | wat thammacak sittha ram | ta MA chak (chula parses differently from thai-language)
วัดประโชติการาม | Wat pracho ti ka ram | wat pra chot ka ram | Ti ? (chula parses differently from thai-language)

.

Also, there is the question of where/where-not to put spaces (in RTGS). For example, the Chula tool leaves these (mostly) spaceless:
วัดราษฎร์ศรัทธาทำ - Wat ratsattha tham
วัดราษฎร์บำรุง - Wat ratbamrung
วัดพยัคฆาราม - Wat phayakkha ram
Are ratsattha, ratbamrung, phayakkha just (single) words that we simply don't know the meaning of?

thanks again

It seems to me that you have set yourself a huge problem. Names of temples are likely to be proper nouns in most cases so you would need to hear them said by a local. Even if you found a place where every วัด was registered I doubt that pronunciation would be shown. Then to add to your problem you have to write them in English! The good thing is that phonetic representations of Thai are often wrong and that is acceptable in all manner of publications, especially maps.