Question

I am preparing a simple dictionary project and I have prepared it to search in 2 languages. Still, as one of them is using Cyrillic letters, I have to be able to check in the database, even if the word is written in Latin letters. What do I mean

in Cyrillic: кон

in Latin: kon

Both should give the description of the word (in this case “horse”). I have been thinking of using two structures with two alphabets in order to achieve this….Still somehow I cannot get it. Does some of you have experience in a similar situation? If yes – please share an advice or code-sample.

Answer 1

A Dictionary should be suitable for mapping cyrillic characters to latin ones. I’ll assume you’re going to follow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9 to map them.

public class ISO9TransliterationProvider {
    private readonly Dictionary<Char, Char> charMapping = new Dictionary<char,char>() {
        { 'А', 'A' }, 
        { 'Б', 'B' } 
        //etc.
    };

    public string ToLatin(string cyrillic) {
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (char c in cyrillic)
            result.Append(charMapping[c]);
        return result.ToString();
    }
}