A trademark registration application must contain a sufficient transliteration and translation of the relevant characters when a trade mark uses a word or words written in characters other than Roman. A transliteration depicts the word’s pronunciation in the original language as opposed to a translation, which provides the word’s meaning in English.

 

As a result, when the mark is assessed—as it must be—by both its sound and its sense, they work in concert to aid the Registrar in determining whether any objections should be made. In the absence of this, a candidate might be able to register a term—say, let’s “good”—by transcribing it into Tamil or Russian Khmer characters and obtaining an illegitimate and unfair monopoly.

 

In general, the Registrar may request an exact translation and transliteration of any word or words in a trade mark that are not in English; however, commonly, the Registrar won’t request a translation of words in Bahasa Melayu. Therefore, each other language must be translated, and the translation as well as the language’s name must be entered on the application.