Apparatus for assisting in the transposition of foreign language text

Abstract

A device is provided for printing a verbal composition in a text form transposed by an operator from the language form in which the source material is presented. Language character forms from different written language formats are encoded and maintained in electronic storage. An operator of the device selects a particular language character from a desired language character font in a single or multiple step selection process to appear at sequential locations of the text during composition of the text. The material to be transposed may be originally presented orally or visually, and is translated or transposed into a different language, or, in the case of some languages, particularly oriental languages, the text may be composed of different language character forms of the same spoken language. For language character forms that utilize a great multiplicity of characters, as opposed to language forms utilizing a relatively few alphabetic or pneumonic characters, a second order selection is made. In this utilization a character or character combination from the simpler language is first selected. All characters of the more complex language form corresponding to the simple character selected are then displayed. The operator then selects from the among the complex characters for inclusion in the text.