Hindi to Braille Translator

WeCapable Braille Translator

Hindi to Braille Translator

Hindi to Braille Translator

Hindi is the Indian language that is written in Devanagari script. This braille translator converts Hindi text into proper braille code. Devanagari is among the most used writing scripts in the world. Around 120 languages use Devanagari. It is composed of 47 primary characters including 14 vowels and 33 consonants.

Hindi to braille translation is done using Bharati braille standard.

Bharati Braille Standard

Bharati braille (Hindi: भारती ब्रेल), also known as Bharatiya braille or Indian braille, is the unified braille standard for the Indian languages. All major Indian languages can be written using Bharati braille. This standard has also been adopted by Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Bharati braille can be used to write languages like Punjabi (Gurmukhi), Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit (Devanagari), Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil in braille. It is notable that Urdu braille of Pakistan is not written using Bharati braille standard. Also there are significant differences between Bangla braille used in India and Bangladesh.

Bharati braille is based on 6-dots braille alphabet and it is very close to the English braille. There are no vowel diacritics in Bharati braille. Vowels are written as full letters. Also, except for kṣ and jñ, there are no conjunct letters; which makes Bharati braille quite like Grade-1 braille.

Louis Braille: Inventor of the Braille Script

Modern Braille script was invented by a French inventor named Louis Braille. Louis was born in Coupvray, France on 04 January 1809. His father was a leather-maker. At the age of three, little Louis was playing in his father's workshop and he accidentally stuck a stitching awl in one of his eyes. Later, his injured eye got infected. Due to lack of antibiotics, soon, the infection spread to his other eye too. Gradually, by the age of five, the Louis Braille lost sight in both of his eyes.

Louis Braille studied at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. There he met Charles Barbier -- the inventor of the night writing script (also a tactile script). Braille began working on a tactile script as an improvement over night writing. It took him two years but, in 1824, he finally created the Braille script with a six-dot system, in 1824, just at the age of 15 years. His headmaster gave him a dictation to test his new script. Louis wrote the entire article being dictated from the newspaper in his newly developed script and then read it back word-to-word.

Braille Alphabet: 6-dot Cell

The braille script designed by Louis Braille uses tactile patterns made with six raised dots arranged in a 3 x 2 matrix, called the braille cell. One or more braille cells may represent a letter, number, punctuation or a symbol. The following table shows the Unicode Braille characters representing various braille cells.

braille alphabet uses these cells
------ 1 12 14 145 15 124 1245 125 24 245 4 45
3 13 123 134 1345 135 1234 12345 1235 234 2345 34 345
36 136 1236 1346 13456 1356 12346 123456 12356 2346 23456 346 3456
6 16 126 146 1456 156 1246 12456 1256 246 2456 46 456
2 23 25 256 26 235 2356 236 35 356 5 56

Illustration of decades in six dot braille system

As per the international convention, braille is always written in left-to-right direction. This convention is followed even for the languages that are written right-to-left. For example, Arabic is written right-to-left, but Arabic braille is written left-to-right.

Notes

Note 1: This braille translation tool and this page uses Unicode braille characters. Without a properly configured computer/mobile device, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of braille characters. If that's the case with you, please contact your computer engineer.

Note 2: Please note that software cannot do a perfect braille translation. Many decisions regarding how to translate something into braille have to be taken by human translators. This is true especially in case of Grade 2 (contracted) braille. This braille translation tool attempts to achieve as much accuracy as possible through a program.

Contact: I welcome your suggestions for improvement in this tool. Also, please let me know if you find any errors. Email me on contact.wecapable AT gmail.com