Liblouis User's and Programmer's Manual
5.5 lou_translate ¶
This program translates whatever is on the standard input unit and
prints it on the standard output unit. It is intended for large-scale
testing of the accuracy of translation and back-translation. The
command line for lou_translate is:
lou_translate [OPTION] TABLE
where ‘TABLE’ is either:
- QUERY
- FILE[,FILE,...]
a comma-separated list of table files
Aside from the standard options (see common options) this program also accepts the following options:
- --forward
- -f
Do a forward translation.
- --backward
- -b
Do a backward translation.
- --display-table FILE
- -d FILE
Use the given display table for the translation. This is useful when you are specifying the table as a query. This option takes precedence over any display table specified as part of the table files.
If no options are given forward translation is assumed.
5.5.1 Examples ¶
Use the following command to do a forward translation of English text to grade 2 contracted braille according to the U.S. braille standard.
lou_translate --display-table unicode.dis language:en grade:2 region:en-US < input.txt
Do the same forward translation but with a specific ASCII braille encoding instead of Unicode braille.
lou_translate -d en-us-brf.dis language:en grade:2 region:en-US < input.txt
Do a backward translation with the English grade 2 table. Note that the ASCII braille input (as shown here) must match the specified display table (North American Braille Computer Code in this case).
echo ",! qk br{n fox" | lou_translate -b -d text_nabcc.dis language:en grade:2 region:en-US
Note that with query-based tables the braille encoding is always Unicode dot patterns unless you override it with -d. With file-based tables the braille encoding depends on the character definitions in the table, so the examples below use -d to specify an explicit display table.
The following example does a forward translation with translation table en-us-g2.ctb and display table unicode.dis. The resulting braille is encoded as Unicode dot patterns (as defined in unicode.dis).
lou_translate -f -d unicode.dis en-us-g2.ctb < input.txt
Use a pipe if you would rather just pass some given text to the translator.
echo "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" | lou_translate -f -d unicode.dis en-us-g2.ctb
The result will be written to standard output:
⠠⠮ ⠟⠅ ⠃⠗⠪⠝ ⠋⠕⠭ ⠚⠥⠍⠏⠎ ⠕⠧⠻ ⠮ ⠇⠁⠵⠽ ⠙⠕⠛
Backward translation can be done as follows:
echo ",! qk br{n fox jumps ov} ! lazy dog" | lou_translate --backward en-us-g2.ctb
which results in
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
You can also do a backward translation using Unicode dot patterns:
echo "⠠⠮ ⠟⠅ ⠃⠗⠪⠝ ⠋⠕⠭" | lou_translate -b -d unicode.dis en-us-g2.ctb
resulting in
The quick brown fox