Zotero

The topic that I’ve chosen to curate in Zotero is my MAD midterm topic : Transliteration. I’ve already had a couple of pages in my Zotero library so I just had to add a couple more. I tried to add different sorts of pages to my curation, I didn’t want it to be all full of wikipedia pages and Jstor articles.

At first, I saved a wikipedia page defining transliteration, giving examples of its usage and mentioning the challenges of it. Then, I wanted to get more specific with my topic, so I saved the link to a webpage that briefly contrasts translation and transliteration,since these two concepts are often confused by people. My third step was me getting straight into the topic. I looked up links related to the transliteration of English and Arabic since that was my midterm’s topic and it’s the case that relates to Lebanon. I didn’t find much but I digged deep and finally found some great examples that support my presentation. I found a picture of a chart with the Arabic alphabet, what it’s transliterated into in roman alphabet letters and how it’s pronounced, I also found an online PDF similar to the chart but with much more details and rules of Arabic transliteration.

I also used a facebook page in my curation. It’s a page where transliteration is used as a form of art and it truly shows how even though people use transliteration as a way to facilitate the use of language, some people use it as a form of art.

My last two curations were additional articles related to the topic of transliteration. One is an online article that talks about transliteration, translation and transcription and the second one is a jtor article talking about how transliteration is used for Arabic names.

 

All in all, Zotero was a rather interesting experience for me. I’m not going to lie, it was all way too intimidating at first, I didn’t even see the whole point in using it. But once I got the hang of it, I realized that it might be one of the most helpful things that will get me through college. I’ve used it for different courses and it literally saved my life.

 

 

Tagged: American University of Beirut, ENGL 229, zotero