International Journal of Web Information Systems

Emerald Article: Mubser: a bilingual Braille to text translation with an Arabic interface AbdulMalik Al-Salman, Mohamed Alkanhal, Yousef AlOhali, Hazem Al-Rashed, Bander Al-Sulami

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To cite this document: AbdulMalik Al-Salman, Mohamed Alkanhal, Yousef AlOhali, Hazem Al-Rashed, Bander Al-Sulami, (2007),"Mubser: a bilingual Braille to text translation with an Arabic interface", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 3 Iss: 3 pp. 257 - 271 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17440080710834274 Downloaded on: 10-10-2012 References: This document contains references to 12 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

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Mubser: a bilingual Braille to text translation with an Arabic interface

AbdulMalik Al-Salman
Computer Science Department, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Bilingual Braille to text translation 257

Mohamed Alkanhal
Computer and Electronics Research Institute, King AbdulAziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and

Yousef AlOhali, Hazem Al-Rashed and Bander Al-Sulami

Computer Science Department, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a system called Mubser to translate Arabic and English Braille into normal text. The system can automatically detect the source language and the Braille grade. Design/methodology/approach Mubser system was designed under the MS-Windows environment and implemented using Visual C# 2.0 with an Arabic interface. The system uses the concept of rule le to translate supported languages from Braille to text. The rule le is based on XML format. The identication of the source language and grade is based on a statistical approach. Findings From the literature review, the authors found that most researches and products do not support bilingual translation from Braille to text in either contracted or un-contracted Braille. Mubser system is a robust system that lls that gap. It helps both visually impaired and sighted people, especially Arabic native speakers, to translate from Braille to text. Research limitations/implications Mubser is being implemented and tested by the authors for both Arabic and English languages. The tests performed so far have shown excellent results. In the future, it is planned to integrate the system with an optical Braille recognition system, enhance the system to accept new languages, support maths and scientic symbols, and add spell checkers. Practical implications There is a desperate need for such system to translate Braille system into normal text. This system helps both sighted and blind people to communicate better. Originality/value This paper presents a novel system for converting Braille codes (Arabic and English) into normal text. Keywords Braille, Reading aids, Translation services, Languages Paper type Research paper

Introduction Braille system is a world-wide system used by visually impaired people for reading and writing. It is read by passing ngers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six raised dots, which form a Braille character or Braille cell. These six dots are arranged in two vertical columns of three dots each (NFB, 2007), as shown in Figure 1. Braille is not a language; it is just a code by which languages such as Arabic and English may be written and read (NFB, 2007). In addition, there are Braille codes for mathematics and music (BraillePlus, 2007).

International Journal of Web Information Systems Vol. 3 No. 3, 2007 pp. 257-271 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1744-0084 DOI 10.1108/17440080710834274

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To minimize the space required for printing Braille documents, and also to speedup the reading process, contractions are introduced in Braille. Contractions come in different forms: one Braille cell means a word or part of a word, and sometimes a pair of Braille cells represents a word or part of a word. Braille with no contractions is called Grade 0 whereas Grade 1 is Braille with contractions (some references use the terms Grade 1 and Grade 2). Note that Braille codes are always read and written from left to right even in Arabic Braille. The aim of this paper is to present a robust approach for translating bilingual (Arabic and English) Braille documents into normal text. One application of this software is to be able to perform an automated translation of hardcopy Braille documents using Optical Braille Recognition (OBR) systems to normal text. Literature review To the best of our knowledge, only few researches have been done in translating Braille to normal text. Moreover, there are several software packages that are equipped with a translation engine for Braille to normal text. Since, our work supports bilingual translation from Braille to normal text, we will review the most related works in this specic area. We subdivided this section into two parts: software packages and researches. Software packages There are several software packages that support Braille system, yet few of them support translating from Braille to text. Among these software packages are the following. Arabic Braille editor ABE. It is a grade 0 ABE that works in both directions (Braille to normal text and vice versa). One drawback of ABE is the inability to include English text in the translated text. Figure 2 shows a snapshot of the ABE Software (Al-Salman and Al-Khalifa, 2003).
1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure 1. Braille cell

Figure 2. A screenshot of the ABE

Braille master system. BrailleMaster is a text to Braille translator software that includes an editor and a viewer. It supports up to grade 2 English Braille, but does not support Arabic Braille. BrailleMaster allows its users to edit or create translation rules using a symbolic language called LOUIS. In addition, it provides a component to verify Braille rules and to show the list of rules used to translate a string. BrailleMaster allows dynamic changes of text formatting using special commands included in the source. These formatting commands include: page and line length, margins, header and footer, page numbering, paragraph indent, line centering, inserting Braille codes directly, switch between translation rules within text. The BrailleMaster editor has all the features of a sophisticated word processor: searching, open multiple windows, copying and pasting. Figure 3 shows the application interface. It also shows the intermediate representation between the original text and Braille, which shows the type of contraction used in translating the text (BrailleMaster, 2007). NFBTrans. It is a freeware program, which converts normal text into Braille and vice versa. Special formatting commands may be placed in the text to customize the output. One drawback of NFBTrans is the absence of graphical user interface (as shown in Figure 4). NFBTrans does not support Arabic language, but users can add it by writing a translation table (NFB, 2007). MegaDots V2.3. It is a word processor that translates Braille code to normal text. The user can view the document in print or Braille. He/she can also work in two modes WYSIWYG and Show Markup. WYSIWYG shows how the pages will look in the nal output. Show Markup mode gives the ability to see all the commands that shape the document. It supports English grade 0 and grade 1 in both directions (from Braille to normal text and vice versa). MegaDots is difcult to use because it is based on DOS environment (as shown in Figure 5), yet it has a speech feature (Duxbury System, 2007). WinBraille. It is a free software that translates normal text to multi-grade Braille for more than 30 languages. Arabic Braille is one of these languages, but only grade 0 is supported. Moreover, there is a version that comes with Arabic user interface. One drawback is that the user cannot use English grade 0 (or 1) along with Arabic text. Figure 6 shows incorrect translation of an Arabic text when mixed with English. Professional WinBraille users can create Braille translation rule le for any language. WinBraille provides advanced formatting features such as header and footer handling, table and bullet formatting, translation into several languages in the same document,

Bilingual Braille to text translation 259

Figure 3. A snapshot from BrailleMaster

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Figure 4. A snapshot from NFBTrans interface and IO

Figure 5. A snapshot from MegaDots

Figure 6. A snapshot from WinBraille

hyphenation, etc. It can import text from most of the word processing packages (Index Braille, 2007). Duxbury Braille translator V10.6. Duxbury Braille translator (DBT) is one of the most popular software that translates text to Braille and vice versa for many languages

(including Arabic). Its translation table includes 14 languages, yet only one table can be chosen for each document. DBT can import different les formats supported by word-processors. DBT does not allow adding new language (rules). Figure 7 shows DBT window while translating an Arabic text (Index Braille, 2007). Translatum. It is a web-based application that translates Braille to text and vice versa; yet it translates mainly English language (Translatum, 2007). Researches In literature, few researches have described the details of translating Braille to text. Most of the scientic researches in this eld are directed toward OBR. An example of Braille to text research is the one explained in (Blenkhorn, 1995). It is based on nite state approach that operates with a nite number of states that perceives the correct state, in addition to its ability to perform both left and right context checking using matching algorithms. This feature is very important in determining characters proceeding wildcards. One of the greatest advantages of this system is its ability to convert Braille to any language based on pre-specied conversion rules. In regard to OBR, little details about the process of translating Braille to text is mentioned. Most OBR systems support English only. Examples of such researches can be found in Hentzschel and Blenkhorn (1995), Wong et al. (2004) and Dias (2001). System design and implementation Mubser system receives three parameters, processes them and outputs normal text (Arabic or English), as shown in Figure 8. The three parameters are: Braille text, its language (Arabic, English or Auto Detect) and its type (Grade 0, Grade 1 or Auto Detect). The system nal output is the translated text. Mubser System has two processes as shown in Figure 9. The rst process is identier which tries to detect the language and the grade of Braille text if they were

Bilingual Braille to text translation 261

Figure 7. A snapshot from DBT

Braille Text Language & Grade Mubser Normal Text (Translated Text)

Figure 8. Data ow diagram for the entire system

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not provided (i.e. Auto Detect). After that, the engine process will translate the text with the help of the rules le. The engine process can be divided into three processes: Scanner, PuncDetector and Translator, as shown in Figure 10. Scanner divides the text into words and forward them one at a time to the PuncDetector, which detects the punctuations and splits a word into three parts (see the examples in Table I): (1) Punctuations at the beginning of the word, including ( [ { " . (2) Punctuations at the end of the word, including ) ] } " , ; . : ? ! . (3) Whatever is left after removing the two parts (1 and 2) above. After splitting the word into three parts, the PuncDetector forwards them to the Translator which translates them to normal text with the help of the rules le. Figure 11 summaries the control ow of the Mubser system. The system consists of the following eight classes: (1) FileManager. Acts as a le interface for other classes that need to access les either for reading or writing. It is composed of two classes: Reader and Writer. (2) Reader. Acts as a reading interface for les. (3) Writer. Acts as a writing interface for les.

Braille Text Normal Text (Translated Text) Language and Grade Identifier Language & Grade Query Engine Result Rules File

Figure 9. DFD level 1 for the Mubser system

Braille Text

Braille Word Scanner PuncDetector

3 Parts Translator

Normal Text (Translated Text)

Figure 10. DFD level 2 for the engine process (from Figure 9)

Language and Grade

# Table I. Examples to illustrate the PuncDetector work 1 2 3 4

Input word Hello! Me?! (for

Pre-punc. Empty (

Word w/o punc. Hello Me For Empty

Post-punc. ! ?! Empty

Braille Text, Language, and Grade

Bilingual Braille to text translation 263

Yes

Is Language or Grade Auto Detect

No Determining the unknown properties (Language/Grade) Separate the punctuations from Braille words

Translate Braille Text to Normal text (Arabic, English or both) Normal Text

Figure 11. The control ow of the system

(4) Identier. Responsible for the identication of Braille language and grade. (5) Scanner. Takes a buffer from the input le (by calling the FileManager) and produces one word at a time. (6) PuncDetector. Detects the punctuation at the beginning and at the end of the words produced by the scanner. (7) Translator. Translates the words produced by the PuncDetector and writes them to the output le (by calling the FileManager) along with the punctuations that are extracted by the PuncDetector. (8) RuleFile. Acts as an interface between the rule le and other classes that need to access it. Figure 12 shows the association and aggregation relations among the above classes and how they interact with each other.
RuleFile PuncDetector

Translator Identifier FileManager Scanner

Reader

Writer

Figure 12. Association and aggregation between classes

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System functionality Basically, Mubser system has three main functionalities: grade identication, language identication, and translation of Braille text to normal text. In the following subsections, we explain briey these functions. Grade identication. Usually, Braille codes have two grades: zero (un-contracted) and one (contracted). So, if the Braille document grade is unknown, Mubser has to identify it automatically. The grade identication can be done in two ways. The rst one is via scanning the Braille text searching for contractions, such as ; ; ; ; :; and _. Unfortunately, this approach is inefcient because the system may not face such contractions in the document. Moreover, There is an intersection between grade 0 and grade 1 (i.e. some cells can be used in grade 0 as well as grade 1). The other approach for automatic grade identication is based on scanning the Braille text and counting each of the following: . the occurrence of the most frequently used words written in grade 0; and . the occurrence of the most frequently used words written in grade 1. This approach was successful. Language identication. Currently, Mubser supports two languages: Arabic and English (in fact, there are three languages, because there are two standards for Arabic Braille: the Saudi standard and the unied Arabic Braille standard). After studying both Arabic and English Braille rules, we noted that some combinations of Braille cells only appear in one of the two languages, which may help us in the language identication. Unfortunately, this approach has some limitations, one of which is that these combinations only appear in grade 1. An alternative approach that can be used is similar to the grade identication: counting the occurrences of the most frequently used words in Arabic and English languages. Unfortunately there was no published researches about the most frequently used words in Arabic. So, we got a corpus of more than 3,000 newspapers articles from King AbdulAziz City for Science and Technologies, and wrote a program that analyzes the corpus to nd the most frequently used words in Arabic. We tried to include some , to our list but it leads to incorrect language important word-segments, such as identication. Let us explain the situation by an example: the Braille cell C in Arabic Braille grade 1. Also, it means the letter c when it comes corresponds to at the beginning of an English Braille word. As a result, every word starts with the letter c in an English document will be counted as an occurrence of one of the Arabics most frequently used words. So, our list contains only whole-words. Table II shows the most frequently used words in Arabic. Also, the most frequently used words in English (Hiebert, 2001) are listed in Table III.

Table II. The most frequently used words in Arabic (in alphabetical order)

When it comes to the implementation, we should identify the language and grade simultaneously because if we choose to identify the language rst, for example, we will count two groups of words: (1) (L1) the most frequently used words in Arabic either in grade 0 or 1; and (2) (L2) the most frequently used words in English either in grade 0 or 1. Suppose we conclude that the documents language is Arabic. Now, if we want to nd the grade, we will construct another two groups of words: (1) (G1) the most frequently used words in Arabic written using grade 0; and (2) (G2) the most frequently used words in Arabic written using grade 1. Actually, the union of these groups is the group L1 above, and the occurrence of these two groups is already counted. So, we have four groups (possibilities): Arabic grade 0, Arabic grade 1, English grade 0, and English grade 1. By considering mixed language documents, we have two counters for each group to count primary and secondary occurrences of them. Rule le There are three options for the creation of a rule le: as an ordinary text le, as an XML le, or as a database. We chose the second option, XML le, because it provides the ability to represent the rules in a structured format that makes the modication easier. Mubser translation system has three XML les; one for each supported language. The XML les have seven main tags. (1) , special_characters . . Capital sign, number sign, language swap sign . . . , etc. (2) , characters . . List of Braille cells that appear in grade 0. (3) , punctuations . . List of Braille punctuations along with their position in words. (4) , numbers . . List of numbers and numbers delimiters. (5) , contractions . . List of Braille cells that appear in grade 1 as contractions along with the conditions that determine their meanings (details are bellow). (6) , shortforms . . List of shortcuts. For example, (yr) is a shortcut for (your). (7) , conditions . . List of conditions used for contractions. In general, the meaning of Braille is determined by its position in the word (positional condition): isolated, at the beginning, at the middle, or at the end. In few cases, the interpretation of a Braille cell cannot be determined from its position in a word only; other parts of the word have their effect on the meaning. This type of condition is
A Be His Of This And For I On To Are From In That Was As Have Is The With At He It They You

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Table III. The most frequently used words in English (in alphabetical order)

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named Contextual Condition. The conditions tag is used to dene the contextual conditions. One of the differences between positional and contextual conditions is the number of meanings associated with them. In positional conditions, each position may have one meaning. But in contextual condition, each condition has two meanings associated with it: one if the condition is satised, and the other if it is not. The , special_characters . tag contains sub-tags that dene the special characters used in Braille coding. These tags are shown in Table IV with a brief description. Each of the tags: , characters . , , numbers . , , punctuations . , , shortforms . , , contractions . and , conditions . contain a list of sub-tags as describe in Table V. Each one of the sub-tags , isolated . , , beginning . , , middle . and , last . in the , contractions . tag represents one positional condition case. As in the example of , contractions . in Table V, it is possible to have more than one contextual condition for one Braille cell, but they must be joined by one of the two logical operations: AND (&), and OR (j). Here, is an example to illustrate how contextual condition works. In the Arabic Braille (Saudi Standard) grade 1, if the cell\comes at the end of a word, it is interpreted ) if it is preceded by preposition ( or ). Otherwise, it is as ( interpreted as ( ). This is expressed as a contextual condition of type PrecededBy . So this cell can be used in the and the list of possible segments are , and . words: Finally, we should point out that the system has been implemented using Visual C# 2.0. User interface Users can view and edit both Braille and text after the translation, open existing Braille le, and save the le after translation. The main screen is shown in Figure 13. User can determine the language and the grade of Braille le through several ways: by selecting from menu, or via the icon on the toolbar. The translation is done also in a similar way. Before the translation, the system asks the user to specify the language and the grade of the primary Braille language (the rst language that appears in the document) and the grade of the secondary Braille language. Figure 14 shows this dialog for language and grade options. In the rule le options window, user can add new items (character, contraction, etc.), from update or delete existing items. When the user selects menu, he/she can manipulate the rule le using the dialog shown in Figure 15.

Tag name , LANGUAGE . , CAPITAL . , LETTER . , NUMBER . , ISOLATED .

Description Language swapping sign Capitalization sign Sign used to force the following cell to be interpreted as grade 0 Number sign Sign used to force the following cell to be interpreted as an isolated grade 1 cell

Table IV. Sub-tags of , special_characters .

Tag name , characters . , numbers . , punctuations .

Sub-tag format , ch Braille a . b , /ch . where b is the translation of the Braille cell a Example: ,ch Braille b . , /ch . , n braille a . b , /n . where b is the translation of the Braille cell aExample: ,n braille a . 1 , /n . , p position 1 braille a . b , /p . where b is the translation of the Braille cell a, and 1 indicate the possible position of the punctuation: B (Beginning), L (Last), and A (Any)Example: ,p position B Braille 7 . ) , /p . ,p position L Braille 8 . , /p . ,sf short a . b , /sf . where a is used as an abbreviation for bExample: ,sf short yr . your , /sf . , c braille a . ,isolated . b , /isolated . ,beginning . b , /beginning . ,middle . b , /middle . ,last condition # . ,true . b1 , /true . ,false . b2 , /false . , /last . , /c . where b is the translation of the cell a if there is no contextual condition, and if we have a contextual condition (as in ,last . ): b1 and b2 are the meanings associated with the contextual conditionExample: ,c braille c. ,isolated . can , /isolated . ,beginning condition 1j2. ,true . can , /true . ,false . c , /false . , /beginning . ,middle . c , /middle . ,last . c ,/last . , /c . , cond number # type 1 . u , /cond . ,br . where 1 is the condition type, either PrecededBy or FollowedBy, which determines the part of word checked for this condition: the part before or after the current Braille cell. u is the list of segments allowed to appear in the checked partExample: ,cond number 1 type FollowedBy . s , /cond . ,cond number 2 type FollowedBy . t ,/cond .

Bilingual Braille to text translation 267

, shortforms . , contractions .

, conditions .

Table V. Formats of sub-tags of the main tags in the rules le, with examples

System testing Testing should focus on the two main functions: translation and automatic language and grade identication. The automatic identication gives wrong results for very short documents (10-15 words). The correct identication precision increases as the length of the document increases. We expect a high precision for documents with more than 100 words. There are some translation errors due to conicts between the two Arabic Braille rules (Unied and Saudi standards). For example, -&t can be translated as . It is obvious that the second one has no meaning in Arabic. Thus, this or

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Figure 13. The main screen

Figure 14. Language and grade options dialog

Figure 15. Rule le manipulation

type of errors can be solved using a spell checker. Figure 16 shows the steps for translating a Braille document using automatic language and grade identication. Another translation example is shown in Figure 17. The word -lwis can be translated as or according to the Unied Arabic Braille Standard. Also, the word -lhl has two meanings: and . These conicts are because the Braille cell is used as a punctuation ( ) and also used for contractions.

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Figure 16. Steps for translating Braille text with the automatic identication feature

Figure 17. Translation example for Arabic Braille grade 1 using the unied standard red squares do not appear on the screen, but added for illustration

Conclusion and future work The aim of Mubser system is to translate Braille codes to normal text for both languages Arabic and English, and for both grades 0 and 1. We designed a friendly Arabic user interface for the system that includes an interface for modifying the rule le. We added some features to the system to simplify the translation task, such as the automatic identication of language and grade. The system also provides the option to print or emboss Braille documents, and to print the text documents after translation. There are several avenues to improve the current system. Among these possible improvements and features are: . Adding a spell checker to solve errors resulting from the conicts in the Arabic Braille rules. . Supporting translation of mathematic equations and scientic symbols.

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Enhancing the system to accept adding a new language. Integrating the system with optical Braille recognition system.

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References Al-Salman, A. and Al-Khalifa, H. (2003), Towards a computerized Arabic Braille environment, Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 497-508. Blenkhorn, P. (1995), A system for converting Braille into print, IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 215-21. BrailleMaster (2007), BrailleMaster homepage, available at: http://braillemaster.com BraillePlus (2007), BraillePlus homepage, available at: www.brailleplus.net/braille-articles/ braille-history.htm Dias, I. (2001), A portable device for optically recognizing Braille-Part II: software development, paper presented at 7th Australian & Neazlan Intelligent Information System Conf., Perth, W. Australia, pp. 18-21. Duxbury System (2007), Duxbury system homepage, available at: www.duxburysystem.com Hentzschel, T.W. and Blenkhorn, P. (1995), An optical reading systems for embossed Braille characters using a twin shadows approach, Journal of Microcomputer Applications, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 341-5. Hiebert, E.H. (2001), 1,000 most frequent words in texts, available at: www.textproject.org/ resources/WordList.pdf Index Braille (2007), Index Braille homepage, available at: www.indexbraille.com NFB (2007), The Homepage of National Federation of the Blind, available at: www.nfb.org Translatum (2007), Translatum homepage, available at: www.translatum.gr/converter/braille.htm Wong, L., Abdulla, W. and Hussmann, S. (2004), A software algorithm prototype for optical recognition of embossed Braille, The 17th International Conference in Pattern Recognition, Cambridge, MA, pp. 586-9.

About the authors AbdulMalik Al-Salman is an Associate Professor and the Vice Dean of the College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He got his BS in computer science with rst honor, KSU; his MS in computer science, University of Georgia, USA; his PhD in computer science, OK Sate University, USA. His area of interests include programming languages, Assistive Technologies of special need people, Arabization, and mobile technology. AbdulMalik Al-Salman is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: salman@ccis.ksu.edu.sa Mohamed Alkanhal nished his BSc degree (Honors) in computer engineering from King Saud University, Saudi Arabia in 1992 and received his MSc degree from University of Southern California and PhD degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995 and 2000, respectively. His research interests include pattern recognition, image and speech processing. He has published around 30 journal and conference papers. He is currently the Head of the Computer and Electronics Research Institute at KACST, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: alkanhal@kacst.edu.sa Yousef AlOhali completed his PhD studies in Computer Science (Articial Intelligence) in 2002 from Concordia University. He has authored/co-authored a number of publications in computer science related elds such as pattern recognition, pattern recognition applications, image analysis, and computational linguistics. Currently he is with the Computer Science Department in King Saudi Univeristy, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: yousef@ccis.ksu.edu.sa

Hazem Al-Rashed received a BSc degree in computer science from King Saud University in 2007. He is interested in developing computing environments for handicapped people, especially for blind. For this reason, he is cooperating with the Electronics and Computer Institute at King AbdulAziz City for Science and Technology for developing such environments. E-mail: hazem85@gmail.com Bander Al-Sulami received his BSc degree computer science from King Saud University (KSU) in 2007. His interested research areas include network security, data mining and distributed computing. Now he is cooperating with the Electronics and Computer Institute at King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology for developing computing environments for impaired and blind people. E-mail: bms676@gmail.com

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