Google Translate Thai with IPA transcription?

Question

IPA is international standard for transcribing phonetic of any language (AFAIK, I am not a linguist), and https://translate.google.com/ is excellent tool for translating between languages. But when I use for translating to Thai, it uses some weird transcription. Is there a way to switch to standard IPA?

Edit: Thanks, wikipedia article about ISO_11940-2 says: "(ISO 11940-1) bears no resemblance to Thai pronunciation" , while ISO 11940-2 seems to be focused more on pronunciation ("All information on vowel length and syllable tone is dropped" and "Transcription is according to pronunciation, not Thai orthography").

So even getting ISO 11940-2 would not get me pronunciation with tones, and it is not Google's goal to provide it.

Is there other website which converts a text in Thai to (preferably) IPA with tones?

Answer 1

No, because they don't provide a transcription, they provide a transliteration. Note that if the language uses the Latin alphabet, you get no help. It is also not always the "best" transliteration, for example in Arabic it does not retain the plain / emphatic distinction in dentals and its rendering of ʕ (as "e") is, uh, odd. The contrast between transcription and transliteration in Mongolian is fairly stark: you (they) would have to do a fair amount of fieldwork to determine how written text is actually pronounced. The case of Thai is spelled out here, and the Royal Thai General System of Transcription which is more about pronunciation is explained here.