How to preserve Turkish characters when translating

Distinguish dotted and dotless I

Turkish distinguishes i from ı. Their uppercase counterparts are İ and I respectively. Unicode documents this language-specific casing behavior. Treating every capital I as the English lowercase i can therefore produce the wrong character in Turkish text.

Keep a name exactly as its owner or authoritative record spells it. For example, compare each letter in “İpek” or “Işık” rather than deciding that a visually similar English letter is close enough. Do not use automatic all-caps conversion as a cleanup step for an unfamiliar Turkish name.

Inspect copied text before translating

Preserve letters such as ç, ğ, ö, ş, and ü rather than stripping their marks for convenience. If the source displays question marks or unusual sequences where letters should be, return to a reliable copy. Translation cannot reliably reconstruct information that has already been lost.

A useful check is to paste a short sample into a plain-text editor and compare it with the original. If a PDF copy changes letters or word boundaries, correct the source first. For TXT files, save a clean UTF-8 copy in your editor when the original encoding is causing problems.

1. Find a reliable source and keep an unchanged reference copy.
2. Check Turkish letters, especially dotted and dotless I in names and headings.
3. Choose Turkish explicitly as the source language when translating a short or mixed-language passage.
4. Translate a complete sentence or paragraph within the 5,000-character limit.
5. Compare names, addresses, and numbers again after copying the result into its destination.

Keep context around short expressions

An isolated word or fragment offers less context than a complete sentence. Include the nearby words that explain who is speaking and what is being discussed. When an address or reference number appears beside ordinary prose, keep it recognizable and verify it separately.

Do not rewrite an unfamiliar suffix merely because it looks unusual. If you have permission to edit the source, ask the author what an ambiguous fragment means. Otherwise, preserve the original and mark the uncertainty for review instead of inventing a more convenient sentence.

Check the final destination

A correct translation can still be damaged when pasted into another system. Review the actual sent email, saved document, or exported text rather than only the translation pane. Look for replacement characters and unexpected capitalization in the final output.

For names on official documents, follow the receiving organization’s requirements and authoritative spelling. A machine translation is not a certified transliteration service. If the document has identity or legal significance, use an appropriately qualified reviewer and keep the original available for comparison.