How to Work with the Biblical Original Languages

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:

• Ancient Hebrew (U+05xx)
• Ancient Greek (U+03xx)
• Syriac (U+07xx)
• Coptic (U+28xx)
• English, Unified (which also handles French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish)
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (limited support)
• Russian (U+05xx)
• Arabic (U+06xx) (uncontracted), and
• Nestle-Aland notation (also called, "Critical Apparatus"), used to show differences in Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

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 importing your texts into DBT from Microsoft Word files. When you open your file, select the DBT template, Bibilical original language studies. You can translate your file immediately using the biblical translator, but before you do, we recommend that you save the Duxbury Print file (.dxp).

Using the Critical Apparatus

Once you have a Duxbury .dxp file that is prepared for the Biblical original language studies braille translation table, you need to turn on the Critical Apparatus mode in the translator. Do this by placing the cursor at the top of the Duxbury *.dxp file. Press ctrl+[ (that is, hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the left square bracket), then enter the letters vrn~ca, then press the Enter key. The ctrl+[ opens the dialog for entering a Duxbury code. The vrn code changes the mode of a translation table. After the tilde, the letters ca turn on "critical apparatus mode". The Enter key closes the dialog for entering the command. As an alternative, you can insert the string [[*vrn~ca*]] at the top of the Word file. When imported, DBT interprets this string as the DBT command vrn~ca (which is what we want).

What does this do? It adds a braille cell of dots 456 before each Greek word, and adds a double dot 6 before each Hebrew letter.

If you want to turn off this mode, use ctrl+[ as above, but the command is just vrn without ~ca.

This translation mode handles the 18 special characters used in the Nestle-Aland notation (found in the Unicode range: 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. We also placed the following two sample files on the Duxbury website.

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

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

Unfortunately, the fonts in this file were not preserved, so the specialized Nestle-Aland characters appear as dingbats instead of in the forms illustrated below. But the Matthew.docx sample does translate correctly into braille in DBT. This sample displays how technical the Nestle-Aland material can get. The opening line in the docx file automatically turns on vrn~ca (critical apparatus mode) to set the correct mode for translation to braille.

Nestle-Aland Notation

The Nestle-Aland Notation uses the Libronix Apparatus font.

This external link is one guide to the Nestle-Aland Notation system.

Key for the chart of text-critical signs below:

• Column 1: Unicode Number
• Column 2: Character appearance without the LbxApparatus font installed (the correct appearance is in the illustration 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 superscript numbers.

Hebrew Table

Letters

Vowels and Other Marks

Simple Accents

Advanced List - Cantillation Marks

You will see the terms "prepositive" and "postpositive" in the table below. "Prepositive" means that the symbol comes before the word (the first thing you see in the word). "Postpositive" means the symbol comes after the word (the last thing you see in the word).

Usually accents that do not have their position predetermined appear immediately after the vowel in the stressed syllable. However, if doing so 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 syllable, a qadma would be placed before the vowel as well, so not to be confused with a postpositive pashta.

Examples

Recent Work (Included in DBT 12.2)

• Duxbury now builds the biblical languages table automatically from the latest UEB table.
• Best practice is now to use dots 46 for capitalization in Greek. Dots 456 indicate a Greek word in Critical Apparatus mode.
• Several issues related to Hebrew and Greek have been improved.
• Duxbury has implemented a system for showing explicit script change indicators. To turn on the inclusion of script (language) 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"). Not including script/language indicators is the default setting at the start of a document. When the script/language indicator setting is no, DBT inserts language change codes in the form of DBT codes: [lng~el] for Greek, [lng~he] for Hebrew, etc.
• A braille-to-print translator has been created to pair with the print-to-braille 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.