Ukrainian Bible App Goes Viral

May 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Ukrainian Bible App Icon

   Scripture App Builder (SAB) was created to allow many people groups to read and listen to God’s Word in a language they know best and in formats that are accessible so that lives are changed through heart transformation. SAB is free software used by many organizations.
    One of these organizations is Biblica, best known for the NIV translation. In recent years, they have initiated new digital scripture distribution goals using SAB which include: 1) Building a companion Bible app for every new Bible launch, and 2) Building a Bible app for the rest of their translation portfolio.
    This strategy has been transformative in launching the New Ukrainian Translation. Biblica was finishing the process of publishing this translation when Russia invaded Ukraine. They decided to expedite the release and advertising of the SAB-created app. 

Here is the timeline:

Feb 24, 2022 Russia invades Ukraine
Feb 26, 2022 Started Google ads
Mar 17, 2022 100k downloads
Apr 1, 2022 200k downloads
Jul 19, 2022 500k downloads
Feb 26, 2023 1,078,321 downloads, 95% inside Ukraine
15,873,899 chapter engagements
5,769,017 minutes spent on app by users

Scripture App Builder has become a key part of Biblica’s Digital Bible Engagement Strategy. It has proved to be a flexible platform enabling us to both deliver scripture, but also other Bible-engagement resources to our global languages. It is quickly becoming our go-to app development platform. We are also able to serve marginalized language communities with the tool. We have been able to reach over 500% more people in these underserved language communities than with our larger traditional Bible engagement platforms. We are grateful to SIL for their continued development of the platform.

Joshua Seale, Biblica, Director of Digital Products
Filed Under: Content, Mobile

2022 Exelerate Award

December 14, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Our Language Software Development group was honored to receive the Exelerate Award, given in celebration of excellence, innovation and partnership.This award recognized three specific language resources that we produce: Keyman, Bloom, and Scripture App Builder. See more details about the award or watch the ceremony. Past winners of the award include the YouVersion Bible app and Jesus Film app.

Filed Under: Language Software

Students Making a Difference

December 14, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Story Builder

   Scripture App Builder (SAB) can create Scripture videos based on templates and the audio included in an SAB project. ScriptureEarth has used this feature to create thousands of videos with millions of views. However, the process has been time intensive and has required a commercial slideshow video product to generate the videos (so not many people have used it).
   In 2018, some developers from our language software development team participated in the Urbana Hack4Missions where participants worked on 9 challenges of missional importance. One of these challenges was the “automatic creation of text-based Bible story videos.” Due to the work of these participants, they proved that it was possible to use free software libraries to integrate the process directly into SAB. We have been wanting to take this research and include it in SAB but have not had the time to pursue it.
   Last year, students from Gordon College decided to work on this project called Story Builder as their Senior project. This open-source software takes the text, audio, and images for a story and generates a video with Ken Burns effects (panning and zooming) of images during the reading of Scripture verses. They based their work on what was demonstrated at Urbana and developed it into a full product. Chris mentored and directed the student team.
   At the end of the school year, the  students completed the project and we were able to include what they developed into Scripture App Builder 10.0 as one of the major new features. It is already being implemented by our users and is saving them time and producing valuable video for language communities. What used to take weeks to do can now be done in a day or overnight! Read below the feedback that we have received from one of these users.

The Story Builder has automated the video creation process. I have built literally hundreds of Scripture videos in the past couple months. Just today I built a whole collection of videos —Bible stories from the Gospel of Mark in the Keyagana language of Papua New Guinea. 40,000 people who speak this language can now watch for the first time the stories of Jesus in their own language.
   What a time saver —I can have the process work even when I am away from my computer. And it has relieved my carpel tunnel issues! Besides dozens of hours in the past couple months, it has saved me multiple thousands of mouse clicks and fixing typos.

Bill Dyck, Publications Services Team Leader, SIL International
Gordon College Students
Gordon College Computer Science Students who developed the StoryBuilder library for their Senior Capstone project.
Filed Under: Language Software

Reaching for the Stars

September 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment

One of the most important things that’s needed to complete Bible translation projects is something many people take for granted: internet access. 

As more and more people around the world translate the Bible for their own communities, a strong and reliable internet connection provides training and consulting opportunities to keep the work moving forward. 

Learn how satellite internet technology like Starlink is helping deliver Scripture to people faster than ever before. 

Wycliffe’s mission is to serve with the global body of Christ to advance Bible translation and work together so people can encounter God through his Word.

Expediting Bible Translation Through Starlink Satellite Internet
Filed Under: Missions

Scripture Earth App

September 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment

    Chris and his colleagues have been working on Scripture App Builder (SAB) since before its first release in 2015. SAB has been used to create thousands of contextualized Bible apps by many organizations. In 2017, SAB 3.3 added support for building apps on macOS and creating iOS apps. There are many Android apps that have been published to Google Play. However, there have been quite a bit fewer iOS apps published to the Apple App Store created with SAB (some examples: Sylheti, Pertukekem, Dari, Northern Thai, Hindi, and Chin). This is due to Apple rejecting apps if there were too many from the same developer account. As a solution, Apple told publishers to create a single container app that would allow the user to select the content.
    This year, with SAB 9.0, we have enabled our partners to create an iOS container app as Apple has recommended. An organization can take their projects for Android, make a few changes for iOS, and build packages of resources that can be downloaded by the iOS container app. When the user runs the app for the first time, they select a language, download a package of resources, and then the container app becomes like a fully contextualized Bible app for that specific language!
    We have talked with a few of our partners and they are excited about the opportunity to make their resources available on iOS. One of these partners is ScriptureEarth. They publish a website that hosts and links to Scripture resources in thousands of languages. They currently use Scriptoria (the web service that Chris works on) to publish Android Apps to Google Play and then link to the apps on their website. Scriptoria has been updated to support building the language resource packages used by the iOS container app. They will finally be able to provide an iOS app for all of these language communities.

ScriptureEarth Impact
I had the privilege of watching one of the women I am teaching ESL discussion in Laos come to know the LORD! GOD IS AMAZING! Anyhow, I was able to share with her ScriptureEarth to help her find the Bible in her heart language as well as encourage her to watch the Jesus Film and the Mary Magdela Film. It is SO WONDERFUL to have these resources so easily accessible. She lives in Laos and this resource proves to be so practical and beneficial. I literally use it or share it weekly! LOVE IT!

Bill Dyck, a co-worker of Chris’ at JAARS, uses Scriptoria to publish many of the Android apps on ScriptureEarth.
Filed Under: Content, Mobile

EMDC Online

March 12, 2021 by Leave a Comment

    For a few years, Chris has travelled overseas once a year to participate in EMDC, which is a conference where half of the attendees are workers in the field and the other half are those like him providing services and training. Due to COVID-19, it was cancelled last year and some sessions were done on zoom. EMDC has transitioned to doing year-round online training. Chris will be helping with two separate weeks of training on Scripture App Builder. There are many classes to choose from (and recordings are available). In order to protect people working in sensitive places, attendees have to be approved. If you know of global workers who could take advantage of this type of online training, please let them know: https://emdc.online

Filed Under: Content

Ministry Continues During COVID-19

March 12, 2021 by Leave a Comment

    Like many of you, Chris has been able to do his work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to believe that it has been about a year now. Over the past year, Chris and his co-workers have been praying regularly for their overseas colleagues as they are affected by COVID-19. Some have had to return to their passport countries and some have been able to stay. He and his co-workers receive reports and prayer requests from different areas around the world. Obviously, there have been challenges, but there have been new opportunities as well. We would like to share one of those.

“What is currently happening with the Quechua-speaking Church is really something extraordinary! There is revival! New converts are being added to the Church daily. The local congregations are working to disciple those returning to Christ. Although the government prohibits meetings, the Church is meeting in small groups to pray together as well as trekking into the mountains to fast and pray…We passed out the last 600 Quechua Bibles we had and the calls continue to flood in. All of these are for new believers!

A regional director from SIL Americas shared, “Almost everything we do in the [Americas] Area is in partnership with one or more ministries.” This story was shared in late June by the director of ATEK*, one of SIL’s partners in Peru.
Filed Under: Uncategorized

A New App Builder

March 12, 2021 by Leave a Comment

    Chris is on the App Builders team which maintains desktop apps that generate contextualized mobile apps. See the article Why Another Bible App? for more details. These desktop apps are:

  • Scripture App Builder (SAB) – creates Scripture apps that handle the book, chapter, and verse navigation, multiple language translations (including parallel viewing) synchronized highlighting of text with audio, bookmarks, notes, highlighting, verse of the day, sharing verse on image and many scripture-focused features.
  • Reading App Builder (RAB) – creates apps that contain picture books, health and community development materials, song books, illustrated stories and libraries of easy-to-read books for new readers.
  • Dictionary App Builder (DAB) – creates customized dictionary apps with pictures, audio for headwords and example sentences, search, and links between lexical items,

      Last year, Chris was surprised that his colleague had created a new desktop app called … Keyboard App Builder (KAB). From the name it was easy to figure out what it did, but Chris wasn’t sure why he had done this.
    The Language Technology team has a product called Keyman to create language-specific keyboards. There are Keyman apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and even in a web browser. Our current app builders can include a Keyman keyboard in the created apps to help with text input in the app. So why did we need to create contextualized keyboard apps?
    The keyboard app allows the user to add a system keyboard to their device, enabling them to type their language within other apps such as Gmail, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It also helps users of the keyboard app find the Scripture app in their language. Chris was working with one of the Keyboard App Builder users on an issue and asked him about how KAB is being used. Please read his story…

Discovering Scripture With Keyboards
“Siares” is the code-name for the national language of a small country where being found in possession of the Bible can get you a long prison term. It’s the only country in the world remaining for which the majority language does not have a complete New Testament translation, but several books have been published in a Scripture app. The problem is getting this Scripture app discovered, as an advertising campaign could result in a backlash. Enter Keyboard App Builder: The keyboards available to mobile users in this country are a pain to work with, but we’ve designed a much easier keyboard for the “Siares” language, building it with Keyboard App Builder. Since releasing it a few months ago, it’s become one of the most popular keyboards in this country, with over 5000 users. The keyboard app makes it easy for users to discover the Scripture app. Please pray that many would discover the Scripture app and encounter the claims of Jesus there.

Filed Under: Language Software

AI Lends a Helping Hand

March 27, 2020 by Leave a Comment

    When Chris talks about the work that he does with technology and how it helps accelerate Bible translation, some people ask if Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used. There are a few of his colleagues who are experts in AI, and they have been researching appropriate ways to use AI in their work. Here is an article by one of these experts, Dr. Daniel Whitenack, who used AI to automatically translate “Wash your hands” in 500+ languages.

TLDR – I used multilingual unsupervised methods to train cross-lingual word embeddings for over 500 languages. These embeddings allowed me to extract components of the phrase “wash your hands” from existing target language documents. I then combined these components to generate something close to the phrase “wash your hands” in 510 languages not currently supported in any public translation platform.

https://datadan.io/blog/wash-your-hands
Filed Under: Uncategorized

Let’s Grow a Library

March 27, 2020 by Leave a Comment

    The About Coronavirus book is just one example of how people are using Bloom, a desktop application that makes it easy to create simple books and translate them into multiple languages. Bloom is designed for new computer users in mind, and it has special features to guide them in simple book making, so people need far less training than alternatives like Word, Publisher, or InDesign. Bloom’s Book Library offers books from around the world for the users to translate into a local language. They can also share books that they have made. Watch the video below to learn more about Bloom!

Why does anyone need Bloom? This video explains the role Bloom software can play in aiding literacy development. It also gives an overview of the key features of Bloom.
Filed Under: Language Software
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