If I'm not mistaken, I believe the last figures I saw said that about 500
braille books were added each year; however, because the Collection
Committee demands it, a high proportion of these are for children.
----- Original Message -----
From: <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 4:44 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Fw: Em-dashes
The answer is, that NLS does do most to all of their Braille by hand.
The ladies here at the Cleveland Sight Center, don't even scan and OCR their
stuff when they translate textbooks for local schools, they type them by
hand. NLS actually doesn't do any of the Braille themselves, it is done by
Braille transcribers working around the U.S. even Duxbury and Monty, and
Mega Dots do a lot of mistakes that a good proofreader goes in and finds
them and sorts them out. Look at National Braille Press, they use "jiffy
Braille" which means no proof reading when they make the zinc plates to
publish the books which is why the books are cheap. And yes NBP
acknowledges that their books have errors, and I have found several, not
glaring, but certainly not stuff that would pass muster with a NLS
proofreader.
To get truly great formatted Braille, you do have to read it, and know what
the rules are. Which is my friend the reason NLS only adds about one
hundred Braille titles a year.
The same time and attention is put into their recorded books and their narrators get paid by the "good recorded minute". They have to research pronunciations, preview the book several times to make sure of pauses and the rest and even explore the pronunciations of the particular languages that are used in certain books.
Shelley L. Rhodes B.S. Ed, CTVI and Judson, guiding golden juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc. Graduate Alumni Association Board www.guidedogs.com
Dog ownership is like a rainbow. Puppies are the joy at one end. Old dogs are the treasure at the other. Carolyn Alexander
----- Original Message ----- From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:46 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Fw: Em-dashes
Thanks, Jana. But that brings up a question: If NLS can put out such good
Braille, why can't Bookshare do what they do. Surely, they don't do it by
hand, do they? Or do they? If they use software to get such nearly perfect
translation, why can't Bookshare just use that instead of all this talk
about why the translator can't do m dashes correctly? How does NLS do their
translation? Does anyone here know the answer? Maybe some proprietary
government-only software that noone else can have access to?
Thanks. ----- Original Message ----- From: Jana Jackson To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 9:32 PM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Fw: Em-dashes
Hi, Everyone! Here is a response from Jim Fruchterman regarding the
question of em-dashes. Sorry, I just realized that I forgot to send it over
last night. <Smile>
Jana
----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Fruchterman To: Jana Jackson ; Gustavo Galindo Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 10:38 PM Subject: RE: Em-dashes
Thanks, Jana. I took a look at the digest from Saturday, and I assume the
answer is that we don't want to move away from the way the book was printed:
we have made a commitment to publishers and authors to work to bring the
scanned texts closer to the original. If we have a preference from Braille
readers to change our Duxbury output, I'd rather keep the focus on that.
Jim Fruchterman
jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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