Tibetan to Traditional Mongolian: translate the phrase before choosing its written form
Traditional writing is not a phonetic respelling of the source
Janhunen’s Mongolian description distinguishes Written Mongol orthography from a phonemic transcription and from Cyrillic Khalkha spelling. A Tibetan source message intended for Traditional Mongolian therefore needs a Mongolian translation followed by the appropriate written representation. Replacing Tibetan sounds with visually plausible Mongolian letters would produce a different task.
This distinction is practical when a Tibetan message names an everyday object. The target should express the Mongolian word for the object, not preserve the source pronunciation as though every noun were a personal name. Only expressions that genuinely require transliteration should be handled as names rather than ordinary translated vocabulary.
A compound title must be interpreted as a whole
Garrett and Hill distinguish Tibetan blon-chen, prime minister, from blon-po chen-po, great minister. These short examples show why translating by syllable can fail before the target script is even considered. The first identifies an office; the second evaluates a minister.
A Traditional Mongolian translation of a Tibetan account about an official must preserve that lexical difference. Writing the result in the requested script does not repair a phrase that has already confused rank with praise. Establish whether the source denotes a title, an ordinary noun phrase or an evaluative description before selecting the corresponding Mongolian expression and its conventional spelling.
Pronunciation guidance and written spelling serve different purposes
Janhunen illustrates the distinction through a borrowed tractor word, contrasting a phonemic representation with Written Mongol traktur or taraktur in Romanised notation. These examples are cited as spelling evidence, not supplied as a final Traditional Mongolian translation. A pronunciation-oriented approximation is not automatically the conventional written word.
A Tibetan agricultural description may contain both an equipment noun and a place or personal name. The equipment term needs lexical translation; the name may need an established target spelling. Do not apply one ad hoc sound-conversion method to both. The target reader must be able to recognise the intended item and the intended name through the conventions appropriate to each.
A numeral’s function survives the change of script
Garrett and Hill distinguish cardinal gñis, two, from ordinal gñis-pa, second, and show that numeral-like material can also occur inside larger compounds. In Traditional Mongolian, the target writing should preserve the interpreted numerical function rather than merely display a recognisable number somewhere in the phrase.
For a Tibetan equipment list, two machines and the second machine make different references. A compound describing a physical characteristic can differ from either. Resolve those meanings while translating the noun phrase, then express the result through the requested Mongolian writing system. Script selection completes the written representation of the translated meaning; it cannot substitute for deciding what the source phrase actually identifies.
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