Getting Started on a Translation

In the "Rules" directory, there are subfolders that correspond to various languages that already have translations. The "en" (English) subdirectory has the most complete translation and is probably the best candidate to use as a starting point. However, other directories can be used and might be better starting points if the language is similar to your language.

Here is an outline of what you should do to begin a translation:

speechStyle = "Simple Speech PI"; description = "Simple Speech PI input translator v1.00 by Design Science, Inc."; isoLanguage = "en"; language = "English";

Change at least the last two lines to refer to the new language. "language" can be in your native language -- it is displayed in a drop-down list.

 * Remove some apparently English only rules for saying "negative" and "positive". The first line to remove is

// rule for speaking "negative" instead of "minus" (apparently English-only) and all of the lines between it and // subject area rules should be first (but not including this last line) should be removed.

text="cap e with grave" can be skipped on the first pass. At this point, you can test simple expressions such as fractions and powers and see if they speak correctly. If nothing is spoken or there are problems, see the Debugging section below.

 * 0x0391 - 0x0x03F6 (Greek letters)
 * 0x2010 - 0x2063
 * 0x20AC (Euro)
 * 0x2190 - 0x2199, 0x21BC - 0x21BF, 0x21D0 - 0x21D5, and 0x21FD - 0x21FF (Arrows)
 * 0x2200 - 0x224D, 0x2260 - 0x228B, 0x22C0 - 0x22C3, 0x22EE- 0x22F1 (Mathematical Operators)
 * 0x27E6 - 0x27EF (Brackets)
 * 0x27F5 - 0x27FA (Long arrows)
 * 0x2308 - 0x230B (Floor, Ceiling), 0x2329 - 0x232A (deprecated angle brackets), 0x23DE - 0x23E1 (horizontal brackets)
 * 0xF000 - 0xF251 including the plane 1 chars 0x1D504, etc (Fraktur, Script, etc, letters)
 * The more characters you translate, the better, but this is by far the most tedious task. Finishing off the 2200 block (Mathematical Operators) and the Arrow block are probably next on the most important character list.
- Open **functions.tdl** and translate the string values of 'text="xxx"' as before.
- Open **units.tdl** and translate the string values of 'text="xxx"' as before.
 * **{{units.xht|units.xht}}** is useful for testing these translations.
 * Some languages have special ways of reading certain numbers. Eg, Spanish uses "un" instead of "uno" in some cases. See the Spanish version of units.tdl and simple-speech-es.tdl to see how this is handled if it is relevant to your language. Contact WIRIS if you need help getting special cases right.
- Open **money.tdl** and translate the string values of 'text="xxx"' as before.
 * Some languages may not use a connector such as "and" between dollars and cents. Use an empty string ("") if this is true for the target language.
 * **{{money.xht|money.xht}}** is useful for testing these translations.
 * As with units, some languages have special ways for speaking monetary amounts that differ from the normal pattern. Check the Spanish files for examples if that is the case with your language. Contact WIRIS if you need help getting special cases right.
- Open the subject area files **geometry.tdl**, **statistics.tdl**, and **calculus.tdl** and translate the string values of 'text="xxx"' as before.
 * We have tried to include notations not used in the US, but there are likely to be ones that need to be added to simple-speech-en.tdl. Contact WIRIS if you need help getting special cases right.
 * There are test files included for testing these translations.
- Open and translate **chemistry.tdl**. For Romance languages, it might be better to start with French or some other Romance langauge as there are word order issues that do not come up in English.
- Open **elementary-math.tdl** and translate the string values of 'text="xxx"' as before.
 * This file and the related elementary-math-base.tdl file are still undergoing development and may change. In particular, we are looking for a better way to speak borrows and carries. If you have a suggestion, please contact WIRIS.
 * Examples of elementary are not currently part of the example files. To try out some examples, go to the [[https://www.w3.org/Math/testsuite/build/main/Topics/ElementaryMathExamples/rec3-ElementaryMathExamples-00-simple.xhtml|elementary math examples]] at the W3C math testsuite. There are many styles of long division. All should work, but find the style used in your country and verify that the speech is correct for that.
- If you feel that any of the pauses are too long or too short, [[support@wiris.com|let us know]]. If could be that they are not well tuned in general, or it could be that they don't work well with your language. If you think it is language-specific, copy the specific rule from simple-speech-base.tdl to simple-speech-xx.tdl and modify the values given in "pause{ms=nnn;}". You can also add "pause" statements if they are not present.