Inspired by this question of mine and that @BenKovitz suggested that I should ask a new question, I attempt to do so. Here goes:
The Persian Wikipedia (Persian: ویکیپدیا، دانشنامهٔ آزاد Vikipedia, Daneshnameye Azad / "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia") is the Persian language version of Wikipedia, spelled Vikipedia. The Persian version of Wikipedia was started in December 2003. It passed 1,000 articles on December 16, 2004 and 200,000 articles on July 10, 2012.The article about Persian wikipedia
"Spelled vikipedia"? I'm a native Persian speaker and I can tell you that we don't even write "vikipedia", since we've got our own alphabet. We pronounce it that way: The w is pronounced \v\ instead of \w\ , and that must have been the point wikipedia wanted to make. This would've been very very idiotic if it was a mistake. So, it seems that there might have been another sense for "spell" than what I believed.
Could "spell" mean "pronounce" or something similar in any ways?
Best Answer
Direct answer: no, "spell" never means "pronounce". Spell only refers to the letters used to form the written word.
The quote you cite would do better to use the word "transliterated" instead of "spelled". OED:
I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that the use of the word is wrong: that is how the word is "spelled" in the English alphabet. I would say that it is an incomplete statement; if the word "spelled" is used for a transliterated word, then "in English" should go along, in my opinion, for exactly the reason you mention.
Of course, the transliteration of a word (and often there may be multiple transliterations in use, especially from languages that have sounds that do not exactly match those in English) is typically going to be based on the pronunciation of the word (possibly, as in this case, in combination with the spelling of the English translation), so there will likely be a relationship between the spelling and the pronunciation, but the two terms are never synonymous.