i think, from what i heard, it still happends in spain that way!
Ewoud
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Goodin" <goodi...@msu.edu>
To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: way ot: chinese braille
Yeah, that was my reaction exactly. In fact I even told her that a lot of
blind people used to be sent to work as piano tuners. I remember that when
I lived in Spain I was shocked that basically all blind people did was sell
lottery tickets. I did meet one blind student at the university who was
studying law, but other than that, the norm was that the blind sold lottery
tickets. the lottery was sponsored by the ONCE, the national organization
for the blind. Many of the spaniards I spoke with were very proud of the
fact that they had such a great system in place so that all blind people
would be financially taken care of, and some couldn't understand my negative
reaction. Anyway, we're getting way off-topic, but yes, we are very
fortunate here.
Donna
On Oct 26, 2010, at 1:22 AM, Scott Granados wrote:
You know, it's messages like yours that really make me realize how lucky
I / we are in the West but the US especially. (at least that's the
region I'm experienced with personally) I can't imagine going to work
every day in a career that was forced on you if you had the right to have
one at all. I may be wrong but it wasn't all that long ago it was like
that here. We were pushed to musicians or piano tuners (not that there
is anything at all in the least wrong with that career choice, Hard work
of any kind brings you closer to "god") but I can't imagine not having
the choice to do what I want. I can't imagine not being an engineer. My
family on my father's side has been engineers or electricians or other
technicians of one form or another for generations. I can't stand
authroity as it is I can't imagine how I would have reacted being forced
to do massage or sell pencils or not allowed to work at all.
Thank you for the reminder.
Now only if we could get some better images in the media we'd be set here.
My colleague, who is married to a Chinese man and has spent time in
China, said that the blind in China are trained since childhood for a
career in massage. Glad to see this isn't their only option. :)
Donna
Best,
Donna
On Oct 25, 2010, at 3:11 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi,
I was going to reply to Donna off list and suggest that she check the
wikipedia. The more elegant way to do this is to use the Wikipanion app
from your iPhone or iPod Touch (under iOS 4 with language rotor). It
will take you to the regular Wikipedia app entry, but your iPhone will
read out the bits with Chinese characters in Mandarin. (At least, it
does on my iPod Touch). The answer in the Wikipedia entry is that there
is a system that is based on Pinyin entry for initial sound and final
sounds, with some ability to indicate 4 tones. However, there is a
section that describes "Ambiguity and future of Chinese Braille" which
addresses the issue of the different phonetic representations of words.
The issue of Chinese input methods for VoiceOver users came up on the
viphone list. If you're interested, see my (long) post titled, "Chinese
Input with VoiceOver on the iPhone [was Re: Chinese VO]" that replied to
a question/complaint from an iPhone user about the inability of entering
Chinese text on the iPhone. (This was posted a few days after iOS 4
with access to the language rotor was released):
http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg24706.html
You're actually better off going to the viphone list and searching for
the thread Alvin started and his later followup in another thread, but
the issue of how to input Chinese text with VoiceOver (if we ever get
voices for that work with VoiceOver on the Mac) is a real one for this
list. Incidentally, for U.S. and Canadian iPhone users, it's possible
to use the Trippo VoiceMagix app (or the newer version Trippo Voice
Translator Plus, which gives you a free app and lets you add on the
voice recognition and text to speech features through in-app purchase,
to get the same thing). To speak in English and have the translated
text spoken (and written) in Chinese, which you could then copy and
edit. And since I wrote the linked post, Sonico GmbH has added a
Loquendo Chinese text-to-speech voice for in-app purchase in their
iTranslate (free) and iTranslate Plus ($0.99, saves history of previous
entries) apps for $1.99. (Their male Russian voice is also very good.)
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Oct 25, 2010, at 08:00, Colin M wrote:
Hi all!
I was a bit curious myself, there is info about Chinese braille on
wikkipedia!
So it does indeed exist and has been around a while!
Just type chinese braille into google and it should be the first
option, if you want to have an gander!
Colin
On 25 Oct 2010, at 18:43, Scott Granados wrote:
Wow that must be a complex braille implementation. I've seen a
Japanese and Chinese typewriter and it's a similar situation with
hundreds of keys.
On Oct 25, 2010, at 8:42 AM, Donna Goodin wrote:
Sorry for the ot post, but this is such an international list, I
figured someone would know the answer.
I'm sitting here having a discussion about chinese braille with a
colleague. Does anyone know anything about it? Does it exist? If
yes, how does it work? My colleague--who speaks Chinese was
explaining that it couldn't just rely on a phonetic symbol system,
because the same phonetic writing can represent several different
words.
Since this is not on topic, feel free to respond off-list,
goodi...@msu.edu.
Donna
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