The Kazakh Uncontracted tables support print-to-braille translation of Kazakh-language literary text written in the Cyrillic alphabet. They are intended primarily for use in conjunction with Microsoft Word, or equivalent external facilities for composing and editing the print text that can then be imported into the Duxbury Braille Translator (DBT) for conversion into braille. English text may also be processed as a sub-language, and converted to contracted or uncontracted English braille (generally following British conventions in those minor instances where they differ from American ones). French, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian may also be processed as sub-languages.
Braille-to-print translation is supported for this language. However Braille-to-print translation may not be perfect, therefore errors could occur. If you find any errors or have suggestions, please send both the *.dxb and *.dxp files along with an explanation to: languages@duxsys.com (Please be sure to include sample files).
Even though DBT from version 10.5 onward can display Cyrillic characters, it is usually more convenient to use an external word processor to compose and edit the print text that is to be translated. When doing so, is necessary to use a facility that encodes the text in Unicode so that it can be imported correctly to DBT. (Some methods of entering Cyrillic rely upon a variant "font" to display standard ASCII characters as Cyrillic. Those methods cannot be used, as those ASCII characters would be imported according to their standard interpretation, not as Cyrillic characters.)
Microsoft Word, properly used, fulfills the above requirements. Use the Lucida Sans Unicode font, or equivalent Unicode font, and a Kazakh (or Cyrillic) keyboard, when entering the Kazakh text.
True braille-to-print translation is supported only within any embedded English text, not in the Kazakh/Cyrillic text. This means that it is not generally useful to translate the Kazakh braille file to print. It also means that the "translated line" will typically contain gibberish when viewing the braille file -you may prefer to turn off the "translated line" under the View menu, or even under Global/Default if you wish it to be off by default.
English text may be entered as a secondary language, and converted to contracted or uncontracted English braille. That is, the grade switches affect the translation of the English text even though the Kazakh text is always translated in grade 1 regardless of the grade setting in effect. In literary text, British conventions are generally followed, to the extent that they sometimes differ slightly from American ones.
French language text may be entered; it is brailled as uncontracted French braille, including the dots 46 capital indicator.
Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian language may also be entered; they are brailled in the same way as Kazakh.
No technical codes are supported.
[/] may be embedded within letter-groups that would normally be contracted, to prevent the contraction.
[ab] is equivalent to [g2]
[fte~b]
[fte~i]
[fte~u]
[fts~b]
[fts~i]
[fts~u]
[cz]
[g1] switches to "grade 1" (uncontracted) braille. This does not affect the Kazakh text, which is uncontracted anyway, but does affect any embedded English text.
[g2] switches to "grade 2" (contracted) braille. This is the normal mode, but actually applies only to any embedded English text as the Kazakh text is always uncontracted.
[in] is equivalent to [g1]
[lng~bg] switches to Bulgarian language.
[lng~en] switches to English language.
[lng~fr] switches to French language.
[lng~kk] or [lng] switches to Kazakh language.
[lng~ru] switches to Russian language.
[lng~uk] switches to Ukrainian language.
[tx] resumes normal translation, ending "direct braille."
[vrn] cancels [vrn~spc], restoring the normal suppression of spaces after commas and semicolons.
[vrn~spc] preserves the spaces following commas and semicolons, which by default are removed in Kazakh braille.
Other translation codes will generally be ignored, or may cause unpredictable translation results.
The table is designed to work with the following groups of characters:
All ASCII printable characters
Accented characters and punctuation marks typical of French, German, Italian, and Spanish
British pound sign (£)
Cyrillic unaccented characters as needed for the supported languages.
The above is a general guide only (see "General Notes" section at the beginning of this document).
These tables were originally based upon the information given for Russian, Kazakh and the other supported languages in "World Braille Usage," a joint publication of UNESCO and the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Washington, D.C. (1990). According to that publication, contractions are not used in Kazakh braille and so these tables should produce braille that is normal for that country.
The tables were originally developed in June 2000 by Duxbury Systems, Inc. We are indebted to Oleg Shevkun and J H Fernandez Garza for more recent information that has been used in their maintenance.
(Documentation reviewed: December 2006.)