Script for mini-book.
Note to Translators: Thank you for considering translating and recording this book in your language. It's written in a fairly informal style, in American English. Feel free to change it to fit your culture, as long as the substance doesn't change. In particular, "1-2 centimeters" would be much better than "1/4 to 1/2 inch" in most of the world.
I'll leave the recording technique up to you, but when I recorded it, I kept each paragraph a separate file, with very little silence on each end of the file. Aesop plays that just fine, but other (song oriented) players I've used don't handle the beginning and end cleanly and they get truncated in what you hear.
I kept the paragraphs separate because I suspect that this book might change in the future, and that makes adding a paragraph here and there easier.
The Aesop Audio-Book Player.
Chapter 1. Meet the Aesop Player
The ancient Greek storyteller Aesop is the inspiration for the name of the audio book player you are listening to right now. Its purpose is to let you listen to audio books without having to fool with confusing technology or big and clunky players. It can hold several whole books, so there are no CDs to deal with.
This little book is about how to use the player for listening, and to let you know about features you might want to use. Of course there's technology underlying this, but the important part is listening to books, and Aesop Player makes that very easy. You may need to ask for help with some things, but the important parts are very easy.
The book you are listening to right now is just like any book you will play in the future, although much shorter. You can control it in the same ways you would control any other book. It even has chapters.
You can do exactly the same things to this book that you would to any other book, so as you listen through this book, you can actually try the things it describes. When the Aesop Player gets to the end of whichever book you are listening to, it stops and positions to the beginning so you can reread a book as many times as you wish. We suggest reading this book through to the end, and then rereading it and actually trying things out.
Chapter 2. Playing books
Since you are listening to this book, either you have started it, or someone has started it for you. The machine playing this book is a phone or tablet set up for your use. It has a screen on the front which is displaying some information. However, you don't really need to read that if you don't want to.
If you tap the screen anywhere near the middle of the screen it will start or stop the player. There's no spot you have to hit, just anywhere near the middle is fine. Each time you tap the screen, it stops paying attention for a moment to prevent accidental taps.
If you want to, you can stop, and then restart, the player now. Just tap the screen, wait a couple of seconds, and tap it again. (If it's not ready, it will just ignore you, so it's OK to tap "too soon", no harm is done.)
You may have noticed that it backed up a few seconds when you restarted it. That's to help you remember where you were. How far it backs up is one of the things that can be changed.
There's a second way to stop and start a book, which you may find easier much of the time. You can just grab the whole machine and put it face down. That feels sort of natural, doesn't it? If you turn it face up, it will resume playing. This can be turned off if it doesn't work for you.
You can try that now if you wish. It will back up a little just as it did when you tapped the screen. There's no difference between tapping and flipping the machine, so you can mix those up any way you want.
Chapter 3. Selecting books.
An Aesop Player can hold around a dozen books (that changes with the actual machine you're using). You can switch between those books any time you wish when it's not playing a book. When you change books, it will audibly tell you what book you have selected by title. It will also remind you of the title at other times.
To change books, you "swipe" on the screen to the left or right. Yes, "swipe" really is a technical term. A swipe is touching the screen while moving your finger to the left or right quickly, all in one smooth motion. (Think of flicking a crumb off a table.)
The Aesop Player is designed to be used horizontally (landscape position), which makes swiping easier.
Each swipe changes the book. They're in alphabetical order by title (as spoken), and it loops back around from z to a or the reverse, so you can just keep swiping in one direction to get back to where you started. You can back up (swipe the other way) if you go too far.
The Aesop Player remembers where you are in every book you have, so you can play one book for a while, switch books, and then come back to where you were in the original book later.
Now is a good time to stop the player, swipe left and right, and find out what other books are installed. Come back to "The Aesop Audio-Book Player" and tap the screen when you're done.
Chapter 4. Volume and Speed
Some books are too loud, or too soft, and you may want to change the loudness. Some performers talk too fast to be easy to listen to, and some so slowly that listening is frustrating. You can fix those problems.
"Dragging", like swiping, is a technical term. Here it means moving your finger as if you were sliding a piece of paper across a glass tabletop with your fingertip. It's a slower motion than swiping.
While a book is playing, you can simply drag your finger on the screen anywhere near the middle. If you drag to the left the sound will get softer, to the right it will get louder. If you drag up, the performance will speed up. If you drag down, the performance will slow down. You can hear the changes as you are making them.
Remember, Aesop player is designed to be used horizontally.
Once the player knows which way you are dragging (around 1/4 to 1/2 inch motion) it will say what it's going to do: for example it will say "louder". Once it's done that, it will make a ticking sound each time it makes it louder (or softer) by one step until it can't make it louder (or softer) any further. At that point it will make a double-beep rather than the tick. You don't have to, but can, keep moving your finger as it does that. It will stop changing when you lift your finger.
If you drag the other way without lifting your finger, it will say a new direction and start doing that. If you are dragging to the right (making it louder) and then drag to the left, it will say "softer" and then start lowering the volume. The volume will never go completely off (although you may not be able to hear it), and it will only go as loud as the machine allows.
Speed is the same idea, only using dragging up and down. Here it says "faster" and "slower". There are two small differences: it will say "normal" when the speed is the original speed, and it gives you an extra tick sound to lift your finger if you want "normal". It will only go to half normal speed, but it will go to a quite fast speed before stopping, as there are a few people who can listen at that speed.
You have to lift your finger to switch between volume and speed settings.
Experimenting with the volume and speed settings is a good idea, but it's hard to experiment and actually listen at the same time, so it's best to try it while replaying this book.
And here's a trick if you want to listen to what happened while you were changing things: just quickly stop (tap) and restart. Aesop will back up a little bit.
Chapter 5: Sleep and wake up.
The Aesop Player works fine on the machine's battery, but like all batteries it will run down in time. To keep it going as long as possible, it turns off the screen after a while. Even if you don't choose to read what's on the screen, having the light from it is handy at times. If you reach for the machine and get near it (when it's face up) it will wake up and turn on the screen. This happens when your hand gets within an inch or so of the screen.
Just so you know, the play time on battery is on the order of a half-day of actual use, although that varies a lot depending on your exact hardware. It can always be used while plugged in to power.
Listening to books can be relaxing, and sometimes you might fall asleep while a book is playing. You can request the Aesop player to guess if you've fallen asleep, and stop the book if it thinks you've done so. It thinks you've fallen asleep if it hasn't sensed you moving in a while. Of course if you keep the player on a table, it can't tell.
You can restart the book with a tap; it will restart at the point it guessed you were asleep.
You or a helper can turn this on in Settings, which is the next topic.
Chapter 6: Settings and Other Things
The Aesop Player can be fine-tuned in a number of ways, from how far it backs up when restarting, to how long it waits to decide you've fallen asleep. These are called "Settings", and they are controlled in a special way. While the settings are being changed, Aesop will not act as a book player.
If reading a phone or tablet screen is hard for you, you don't want to accidentally do something that keeps you from being able to read. If that is the case, you can ask for help to change the settings, and one of the settings is to help prevent that sort of accident. If you use that, it takes a certain amount of concentration to change the settings. But it is designed to be familiar to anyone who is used to tablets or phones, and requires no special knowledge. The settings screen contains a link to the Website if you need it.
Adding or removing books is very similar: if you are comfortable with reading the display and using the Web, you can do it yourself, but if you aren't, you can ask for help to do it. There's a section on the Aesop Player web page on how to find and add books. This book was probably installed in just that way.
Epilogue:
You have come to the end of this book. The Aesop Player will now stop. If you restart the book by tapping the screen, it will start playing at the beginning.
Thank you for using the Aesop Player, and good reading.