3 July 2023

Arabic Braille and Braille in other languages

6 million Braille users

According to the Musée Louis Braille, Braille is used by around 6 million people worldwide, in every single language. While the majority of Braille A2i produces is Grade 2 UEB Braille (UEB meaning Unified English Braille), did you know we can also produce Braille in a number of other languages?

We can produce Braille in almost all European languages, as well as in Arabic.

The most common languages we are asked to produce Braille in, other than English, are Arabic, French, German and Russian.

Braille in other languages uses the same six dots as UEB, but different languages have different contractions (if the Braille is contracted) and can use different symbols for characters such as the @ symbol, and punctuation.

An example of Braille in three languages

Let’s look at A2i’s telephone number and email address in English (UEB), Arabic and French:

Latin Alphabet

01179 44 00 44

info@a2i.co.uk

The symbol used for @ in info@a2i.co.uk is different in each language, and the telephone numbers are also formatted differently.

You may notice that the Arabic Braille is formatted in the same direction as the English and French Braille. This is correct: while Arabic text is read right to left, Arabic Braille is read left to right!

A2i can transcribe Braille into all languages that use a Latin Alphabet, as well as Arabic, and some Cyrillic languages.

In order to produce a document in foreign language Braille, we will require a copy of the document in both English and the translated version. If you don’t have a version in the foreign language, we can also look to produce this for you!

If you’d like a quote for Braille documents, in a foreign language, or would like to know more about the languages we can produce Braille in, why not contact us for a quotation?

Email: info@a2i.co.uk

Web: www.a2i.co.uk

Telephone: 01179 440044

Or use the quick quote form on our website: Quote Request