This invention concerns a method for transliterating an at least partially phonetic symbol-based writing system including entry of symbols into a complex character-based writing system including characters, comprising: entering with a human-to-machine interface a string of symbols into a transliterating engine, the string of symbols comprising a series of symbols at least corresponding to pronunciation of a string of characters; parsing the string of symbols into a series of symbols, each series of symbols forming an utterance unit corresponding to a character of the string of characters; transliterating the series of symbols into the corresponding characters; displaying the characters; wherein the transliterating step comprises matching by database retrieval each series of symbols with one and only one character.