Moving pictures: new tool claims to help build correct picto-translations

11 years ago - Katie Botkin on July 13, 2009

Blogos, Translation Technology

Edongba facilitates modern hieroglyph use.

Zmnsoft has released a Windows application allowing users to create documents and messages using Dongba hieroglyphs, the only hieroglyphic writing system still in use today. This ancient language is used by the Naxi people of Lijiang City, in China’s Yunnan Province, and is expressed in a combination of Dongba hieroglyphs and Geba symbols. The tool allows hieroglyph use in text editors, word processors and graphics programs, and a press release claims that the tool “makes it easy to select the proper symbols, and build messages.” This helpful translation tool appears to be limited to English-to-Dongba, and indeed the only purpose of the tool appears to be the novelty of word-processing hieroglyphs. The program’s Dongba font includes 1,561 Dongba hieroglyphs, 661 Geba scripts and a 50-character international phonetic alphabet for the Naxi language. The cost is $30, but if you’re just curious you can download the trial version from the Edongba website, which also has historical notes on the language.

Katie Botkin

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Katie Botkin, Editor-in-Chief at MultiLingual, has a background in linguistics and journalism. She began publishing "multilingual" newsletters at the age of 15, and went on to invest her college and post-graduate career in language learning, teaching and writing. She has extensive experience with niche American microcultures across the political spectrum.

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