diff --git a/translate/translate-alphabet/01.md b/translate/translate-alphabet/01.md index 7d60dbb..4a1ecd7 100644 --- a/translate/translate-alphabet/01.md +++ b/translate/translate-alphabet/01.md @@ -5,9 +5,9 @@ It is important to make your alphabet easy to learn and read. One way to do this If a neighboring language already has an alphabet, and if that language has similar sounds to your language, it might work well to simply use their alphabet. If not, then it may work to use the alphabet from the national language that you learned in school. -First try to write out several words in your language using the neighboring or national alphabet. When you are done, ask a mother tongue speaker of your language who is literate in the national language to read those words. Are they able to read them? What feedback or suggestions do they have? +First try to write out several words in your language using the neighboring or national alphabet. When you are done, ask a mother tongue speaker of your language who is literate in that other language to read those words. Are they able to read them? What feedback or suggestions do they have? -Now try writing one word in your language for each letter of the neighboring or national alphabet. That language may have sounds that your language does not have. That is fine. However, as you are writing the words you may find that your language has sounds that the national language does not have. You will need to decide how to represent those sounds. +Now try writing one word in your language for each letter of the neighboring or national alphabet. That language may have sounds that your language does not have. That is fine. However, as you are writing the words, you may find that your language has sounds that the other language does not have. You will need to decide how to represent those sounds. There are several ways to deal with this issue. @@ -17,11 +17,11 @@ There are several ways to deal with this issue. 3. Another way is to combine the letter with another, such as is done in English with *ch*, *sh*, *th*, and *ng*. -If you find that there is a group of sounds that seem to all have the same kind of difference from the national language sounds, then it is good to modify that group of letters in the same way. +If you find that there is a group of sounds in your language that seem to all have the same kind of difference from the other language sounds, then it is good to modify that group of letters in the same way. -For all of these, you will need to tell people what those letters represent. They may not realize that those letters represent sounds different from those in the national language. +For all of these, you will need to tell people what those letters represent. They may not realize that those letters represent sounds different from those in the neighboring or national language. Make a list of all the letters you propose to use in your language. As you and the team work on Bible translation, start by using the letters in your list. As you work, you may discover other sounds that you need to represent. Or you may realize that you are representing one sound two different ways. The translation team should discuss how to represent these sounds, agree on a way to represent them, and continue translating. This may be an ongoing process. -If the national language uses a writing system other than the Latin alphabet (from which the letters of the English alphabet come), then think about the different marks that you could use to modify the symbols so that they can represent the sounds of your language. It is best if you can mark the symbols in ways that can be reproduced on a computer. (You can experiment with the writing systems in a word processor or with the keyboards in https://keyman.com) If you need help creating a keyboard, send an email request to . +If the national language uses a writing system other than the Latin alphabet (from which the letters of the English alphabet come), then think about the different marks that you could use to modify the symbols so that they can represent the sounds of your language. It is best if you can mark the symbols in ways that can be reproduced on a computer. (You can experiment with writing systems in a word processor or with the keyboards in https://keyman.com) If you need help creating a keyboard, send an email request to .