Russia Changes Standards for Official Transliteration of Letters in Documents

Russia has decided to adopted international standards for the translation of names and sir names on travel passports. According to the new rules the Cyrillic letter ц will be written in Latin letters as ts rather than tc, as was the case earlier. The vowels ю and я will now be written as iu and ia instead of yu and ya, respectively, as before. Moreover, the earlier ignored hard sign ъ will be depicted as ie, Lenta.ru reports.

Earlier certain branches of the Federal Migration Service used these international standards when translating names and sir names for passports while others adhered to the official rules adopted by the service back in 2010.

Theoretically the new rules could create a headache for some Russians whose names will be affected. For example, their new documents could have spellings which differ from other important documents, such as bankcards.  However, anyone who does not agree with the suggested spelling according to the established rules can make a special request for an exception to the general rules.