They are the staff of Chongqing Library. It took them half a year to produce the first batch of 50 books, and they plan to complete another 50 books this year.
The most beautiful worker
Editor’s Note: They are a group of ordinary people who have interpreted the oath of "the most glorious work" with decades of persistence and dedication; They are a group of ordinary people who have made extraordinary achievements in their ordinary posts and become "the most beautiful workers". On the occasion of the May 1 International Labor Day, this newspaper launched a series of advanced typical reports on "the most beautiful workers", and approached some workers who won the title of national model workers and advanced workers in 2015 to see how they can contribute to society with diligence, wisdom, knowledge and skills.
Let blind children "see pictures" and feel the charm of pictures. This is the wish of four post-80s staff in Chongqing Library, namely Xu Yaoyao, director of the visually impaired reading room, Liu Xinju, assistant director, Hu Rong and Ye Jing.
In order to realize this wish, they spent half a year making their own Braille picture books. Recently, the first batch of 50 Braille picture books were printed, which is also the first batch of Braille picture books in China.
Mother-child dialogue triggers production ideas
"Because of working in the visually impaired reading room for a long time, we spend a lot of time in contact with blind children." Xu Yaoyao said that after a long time of contact, they found that most of the books read by blind children were Braille, with no pictures, and the form was relatively simple and boring.
Last March, a mother took her child to the reading room to read a book. The child read a book about various plants. "He asked his mother, what color are the roses?" The mother told her son, "Roses are red."
Xu Yaoyao, who witnessed this scene with his own eyes, was sour. What is obvious to many children has become so difficult for these children with eye diseases. This gave Xu Yao Yao the idea of making "Braille picture books".
Let the picture come alive in the child’s mind
What is a Braille picture book? Xu Yaoyao said that the purpose of Braille picture books is to tell the contents of pictures in Braille in vivid language, so that children can "read" and give full play to their imagination to form pictures in their own minds.
How to turn pictures into vivid words? "Because only by telling the content of the picture vividly in words can we arouse children’s imagination and play the role of a picture book." Therefore, four people sometimes argue for hours in order to write a good picture.
"Whether the color description of the picture can be richer or not depends on how to add it to the picture description, which is the most controversial place for everyone." Liu Xinju said. For example, the description of color is too monotonous if it is only described as "red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple".
Xu Yaoyao said that the color words in an ancient Chinese prose from the perspective of Weibo helped. In this chart, blue can be divided into indigo, indigo, azure, blue, snow blue, blue gray, navy blue, purplish blue, indigo and so on. "With these colors, the world of Braille picture books will be colorful at once."
It takes half a month to translate a thousand-word picture book.
In addition to color, the production of braille picture books requires the use of braille, and the requirements are higher.
But the four of them don’t know Braille at all. What should we do?
Xu Yaoyao said, first of all, they translated the characters into corresponding Braille through software and then printed them out. The next step is the most time-consuming part: take the printed Braille, open the dictionary, and check whether the blind spots are arranged incorrectly one by one. "It takes almost an hour to verify a sentence of less than 20 words."
Ye Jing felt deeply about this job: after reading Braille for a long time, not only his eyes were sore, but he looked up at everything and couldn’t focus for dozens of seconds. Take Reunion as an example, there are 1,192 characters, that is, more than 7,000 blind spots. Coupled with their own pictures, they need at least tens of thousands of blind spots. It took only half a month to translate this braille picture book.
More volunteers are needed to join in.
After proofreading all the Braille, you need to scan them into the computer and print them out by a special Braille printer. After Braille is printed, it is cut and pasted near the corresponding words and pictures of children’s picture books, and the picture books are finished.
"The cost of making a Braille picture book is not low." Xu Yaoyao said, Take Reunion as an example, a book with 39 pages costs about 780 yuan. After learning about their production of Braille picture books, the library solved all the expenses.
From last summer vacation to this month, it took them half a year to finally complete the production of 50 Braille picture books. "At present, all these picture books have been put on shelves in the visually impaired reading room, and blind children can borrow them from the reading room."
For the blind children in the city, the number of these picture books is still too small. "We have another wish." Xu Yaoyao said that more braille picture books should be made to meet the reading needs of more children with visual disabilities. It is planned to complete another 50 books this year. Of course, they also urgently need volunteers who know Braille to join. (Reporter Li Sheng reports)
(Source: chongqing morning post)