Biblical Original Language Studies

Introduction

The development of the Biblical Original Language Studies braille translator in Duxbury DBT was the subject of the first place Jacob Bolotin Award at the 2016 NFB Conference. Duxbury Systems is proud to have developed a braille translator that opens up the field of biblical scholarship to braille readers.

The Biblical Original Language Studies braille translator blends together parts of many Duxbury translators. The support for some scripts (Syriac and Coptic) is only available in this translator. The translator handles the following different scripts:

• English, Unified (this table also handles French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish)
• Ancient Hebrew (U+05xx)
• Ancient Greek (U+03xx)
• Syriac (U+07xx)
• Ethiopic (U+12xx and U+13xx)
• Coptic (U+2cxx)
• IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) [limited support]
• Russian (U+05xx)
• Arabic (U+06xx) [uncontracted]
• Nestle-Aland notation, which is used to show differences in Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (also called "Critical Analysis").

No special language switching is needed to go from script to script. This single table handles them all.

Using the Translator

You get the best results from Microsoft Word files. Open your file with the DBT template called Bibilical original language studies. At this point you are good to go. You can translate your file using the biblical translator. But before you do, you may want to save the Duxbury Print file (*.dxp).

Using the Critical Analysis

Once you have a Duxbury *.dxp file that is set for the Biblical language studies braille translation table, you need to turn on the Critical Analysis mode in the translator. Do this by moving to the top of the Duxbury *.dxp file. press control-[ then vrn~ca then Enter. The control-[ opens a special window for entering a Duxbury code. A code that changes the mode of a translation table (that is unique to one or a few translation tables), starts with vrn then tilde. After the tilde are the letters "ca", this means we are turning on "critical analysis mode". The Enter closes the special window for entering the command. As an alternative, you can insert the string [[*vrn~ca*]] in a Word file. Upon file importation, DBT takes this as the DBT command vrn~ca (which is what we want).

What does this do? It adds a dots 46 before each Greek word, and adds a double dot 6 before each Hebrew letter. Note: updates to this table circulated informally now use dots 456 to indicate a Greek word.

If for some reason, you wanted to turn off this mode, repeat the above, but the command is just vrn without ~ca.

This table handles the 18 special characters use in the Nestle-Aland notation (found in U+2713-275A) using a braille table supplied by Matthew Yeater, who consulted others as to the preferred code for rendering these symbols.

Sample Files

To gather sample files, we used the website www.sacred-texts.com.

For a sample file of Syriac, see the Word file Syriac.docx.

For a sample file of very technical material in the Nestle-Aland notation, see the Word file Matthew.docx.

Unfortunately, the fonts in this file has not been preserved, so the specialized Nestle-Aland characters appear as dingbats. But the Matthew.docx file translates correctly into braille in DBT. This sample shows how technical the Nestle-Aland material can get. The opening line in the docx file automatically turns on vrn~ca to set the correct mode for braille.

Nestle-Aland Notaion

Here is one guide to the Nestle-Aland notation system.

Chart key for chart seen below:

• Column 1: Unicode Number
• Column 2: Character appearance without the LbxApparatus font installed (correct appearance is in the chart above)
• Column 3: Braille encoding of this character
• Column 4: Description of this character

Separate unicodes are assigned for some (2714, 2718, 2719, 2751, 2765), but 2767 can also appear with a dot. 2715, 2716, 2717, 2750, 2766, 2767, 274F, and 275A can also appear with superscripted numbers.

Hebrew Table

Letters

Vowels and other marks

Accents simple Accents

Advanced List -- Cantillation Marks

"Prepositive" means that the symbol is before the word, the first thing you see in the word. "Postpositive" means the symbol is after the word, the last thing you see in the word. Usually accents that don't have their position predetermined appear immediately after the vowel in the stressed syllabol. If doing this would break up a contraction such as hiriq-yod, the accent is placed between the opening consonant and the vowel. In a word ending with a vowel where the stress is on the last syllabol, a qadma would be placed before the vowel as well so not to confuse it with postpositive pashta.

Examples

(m	public reading merekha
)2	private reading atnach
("	public reading daggesh
),	private reading rafe

Recent Work (Included in DBT 12.3)

• Duxbury is now building the biblical table automatically from the latest UEB table
• We have switched to using dots 46 for capitalization in Greek. Dots 456 is now used to show Greek in the Critial Apparatus mode.
• Several problems related to Hebrew and Greek have been eliminated.
• We now support Ethiopic characters in this translator.
• We implemented a system for showing explicit script change indicators. To turn on the inclusion of script indicators, insert the code [vrn~liy] in the print document (l i y for script indicators yes). To turn off the inclusion of script indicators, insert the code [vrn~lin] (l i n for script indicators no). No inclusion of language indicators is the default setting at the start of a document. When the language indicator setting is no, DBT inserts language change codes of the form of DBT codes: [lng~el] for Greek, [lng~he] for Hebrew, etc.
• A braille-to-print translator has been made for this translator.
• The braille-to-print translator can use either the script indicators or the DBT language codes to determine the current language.

If writing in braille, you can use the following chart to switch scripts: