Crickets, Birds and Cuckoo Calls
The image on the right is of a crosswalk speaker. I’m not actually sure what these are called. Unlike in America where you press a button at the crosswalk to make yourself feel like the light is changing faster, in Asia these buttons play sounds to let people who are visually impaired to know when it’s safe to cross. This particular one, located by Taipei Main Stations 台北車站, reads as follows:
⠝⠧⠂⠕⠴⠈⠑⠨⠐⠒⠕⠌⠐⠅⠌⠈⠊⠵⠄
南北向－布穀聲
⠙⠯⠄⠑⠡⠄⠑⠨⠐⠒⠝⠪⠈⠅⠪⠐⠊⠵⠄
東西向－鳥叫聲
⠑⠽⠂⠛⠥⠄⠁⠻⠄⠖⠐⠑⠡⠄⠊⠶⠐⠊⠵⠄
行人專用－蟋蟀聲
Roughly translated, that would be
nán-běi xiàng – bùgǔ shēng
North-South traffic, the sound of a cuckoodōng-xi xiàng – niǎo jiàoshēng
East-West traffic, the sound of a bird callxíngrén zhuānyòng – xīshuài shēng
Special pedestrian traffic*, the sound of crickets
I wish I had bothered to record each of these sounds, but I wasn’t brave enough to be the guy sitting at the intersection for 20 minutes pushing the button over and over again. My desire to get interesting recordings is only slightly weaker than my desire to not inconvenience others. Even stronger is my desire to not be stared at.
Some interesting points on Braille in Taiwan: It’s different than Braille on the Mainland. That mean’s our current Braille logo may need a Taiwanese partner. The main reason that it’s different from Mainland Chinese Braille is that the Taiwanese version is based on bopomofo. And, as with many mobile phone text messaging systems, the tone is usually required. So in this case ⠙⠯⠄ for 東 has ⠄ as the first-tone marker. You see it again after ⠑⠡⠄. From what I’ve heard, phrase-final neutral tones aren’t usually used in Taiwan, so 東西 as “East-West” and 東西 as “thing” are both said “dōngxī”.
At any rate I’m no expert at Braille one way or another, but I found it interesting that these differences exist in this way. As far as I know, Braille is the same for every language written with Latin letters, so that someone able to read Braille in English who then learned French would have little difficulty. Not the case for the Mandarin speakers of the world.
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* I’m open to a better translation. I know this only as 行人專用區, a pedestrian-only area such as the sidewalk. Not entirely sure how to translate it into proper sign-English.
** Braille should now show for everyone. I’ve changed it to an embedded font so you won’t need to download anything to see it.
Not that I speak braille in any language, but what encoding should I be using for it to display properly?
The Braille displays fine for me. If you can see the Chinese and you have the Braille font installed, it should work for you.
Yeah it’s not an encoding issue. You just need Braille font support. You can find one on Google I’m sure.
To make it even more complicated, there are two different versions of mainland braille 双拼 and 现行, both are used, though I believe 双拼 is the one most commonly found.
suggestion for “行人专用” – “Pedestrians only” or “Pedestrian traffic only”?
行人專用 would be the “exclusive pedestrian phase” of a pedestrian scramble.
@bcheng: Unfortunately, 现行 Braille seems to be more commonly used, as the name implies. Here is a picture of a sign in 现行 Braille on board a Beijing subway train. It reads ⠋⠥⠱⠷ (fushou) and can be understood as 扶手, 副手, or 俯首, among other things. By contrast, tone marks are obligatory in 双拼 Braille, making the system less ambiguous.
shouldn’t 布穀聲 be translated as ‘cuckoo call’? i mean where are the coins here?
Yeah you’re right. I was translating 布 and 穀 separately, not having previously known 布穀 for cuckoo. I’ll change it shortly.
Another place Braille often appears is in elevators, esp. in hospitals and the like.
I’ve always liked the sign outside the Táiběi Shìlì Qǐ Míng Xuéxiào (Taipei School for the Visually Impaired / 臺北市立啟明學校). There’s gotta be a good photo of that somewhere on my hard drive. But since I can’t find it now, Google Street View will have to do.
For an older China-based braille, see the Murray Numeral Type system, which was later adapted to become a script for the sighted once some people started to figure out that it had become easier for blind people to learn how to read than their sighted compatriots who had to deal with Hanzi.
BTW: nán-běi, not nánběi; dōng-xī, not dōngxī; and niǎo jiàoshēng, not niǎojiào shēng.
Thanks Mark. It’s been changed.