Hebrew Flag of Israel

Multiple Templates for Hebrew

The Hebrew language has multiple DBT templates:

The template Hebrew (Israeli) - Basic should be used for all braille used in Israel. The Hebrew (Israeli) translation table provides an option for partial vowels, which is not available in the Hebrew (American) table.

The template Hebrew (American) - Basic is used by those outside Israel to produce prayer books or Hebrew study materials. Several vowel marks are brailled differently between American and Israeli usage. These include hiriq, holam, qubuts, and tsere-yod.

The Biblical Languages template and translator should be used by scholars studying ancient or biblical Hebrew and by those who need to use cantillation marks in the Hebrew.

The Israeli template and translation table treat English as a foreign language. The American and Biblical tables use UEB for English text.

For more details about the DBT translator used with each template, select your template of interest and follow the translation table link there.

Uncontracted Braille

This language is usually produced in uncontracted braille, which means that words in the text are rendered in braille on a one-for-one basis: one braille character for each inkprint letter. Some inkprint punctuation may require more than one braille character. Indicating upper case, emphasis, or numbers also adds braille characters to the character count. However, the braille contains no abbreviations or contractions.

If you have questions about producing correct braille, please contact a member of the appropriate braille authority.

Non-Roman Script

Hebrew is written in a script other than the Roman alphabet. This can occasionally cause problems when importing files to DBT. The best result is usually achieved by importing files from Microsoft Word or Open Office that are written in Unicode fonts. You can contact Duxbury Systems if you have file that does not import properly into DBT. Please send the original inkprint file with your request, not a screen shot of the DBT screen.

Hebrew is written in a script that runs from right-to-left.

Duxbury DBT does not yet properly handle scripts that read from right-to-left for editing purposes. You can open (import) a file, and you can translate into braille. However, you cannot edit the inkprint within DBT. We regret this and hope to correct this issue in a later release of DBT.