Finding and Using Non-English and Non-"Western" Scholarly Materials (Practical Bibliodiversity)

Transliteration Searching is the process of searching for resources in a different language. When searching for resources in different languages, you will need to consider the following: 

1. The terms we use to describe concepts are not always translated directly in different languages and could carry different connotations than what the researcher is intending to research. For example, the direction translation of "period poverty" into French is "période de pauvreté", but research on this concept in French would use the term "Précarité menstruelle".  To find the correct term to search, researchers should use a Thesaurus. Below are some thesaurus recommendations. 
2. Databases are often built using metadata in one language, so it may be difficult to search in a different language. Experiment with different terms and translations to find which ones work best in the database you are using. 
3. Subscription databases often use a Subject Index or Thesaurus to organize their material by topic. This means that all resources about a specific topic ( i.e. Smoking) will be grouped together, even if the resource's authors used a different term (cigarettes) or a different language (fumar, fumer, धूम्रपान). This means that researchers may be able to find materials on specific subject without knowing the correct term in every language they want to search. See the section below on "How to use a Database Thesaurus or Subject Index".  
4. Many resources written in non-Latin scripts are difficult to catalog and search correctly because some databases cannot always recognize non-Latin scripts. While there are typically standardized methods for cataloging non-Latin scripts into Latin characters, this process is far from exact, and older works especially are prone to mistakes in their metadata. To search in non-Latin script languages, see the below resources on Romanization tables.