A Great Opportunity

April 21, 2018 by Leave a Comment

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Chris has been the technical lead and primary developer for the Scripture App Publishing Service. Last fall, they started working with two partners, Faith Comes By Hearing and International Mission Board, to plan an update to the service in order to 1) support multiple organizations and 2) customize the process of publishing apps for each organization.
This would require a significant re-rewrite to a portion of the service. About that time, Chris’ organization applied to Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) for direct funding of certain projects including the Scripture App Publishing Service. A very generous grant was given by ETEN that has allowed them to sign a contract with DeveloperTown to design and develop the software that needs replaced. They didn’t have the staff to complete this work internally and this is a great opportunity to complete the work. Praise God for the resources and talents He has made available!

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Discussions around a whiteboard during the initial design meetings at DeveloperTown in Indianapolis with people representing SIL International, Faith Comes By Hearing, Scripture Earth, and Kalaam Media in early April 2018.
Filed Under: Language Software, Missions

The Great Message

April 20, 2018 by Leave a Comment

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In 1981, while celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cakchiquel New Testament translation, Billy Graham delivered a sermon about the importance of Bible translation in the context of the command that Jesus gave believers to come unto him and go into all the world. Be encouraged by the excerpt from his sermon.  One statement that stuck out to me:

Billy Graham on the Importance of Bible Translation
Filed Under: Missions

Significant Partnership

September 28, 2017 by Leave a Comment

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Chris has been the technical lead and primary developer for the Scripture App Publishing Service. The initial rollout of the service utilized a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) strategy which provides just enough features to satisfy earlier customers and provides feedback for future development. The service has been running for about a year and they have gathered valuable feedback for what needs to be done in the next release.
They have also communicated with other partners who have similar needs. Two of these partners, Faith Comes By Hearing and International Mission Board(IMB), have stepped forward to help with the future development of the service. IMB has a team in Bulgaria who they employ to fulfill different IT needs. Chris has been tasked to design the expansion of the Scripture App Publishing Service and train the IMB team to do the development. He will be traveling to Bulgaria to do the training sometime this fall. Please pray for wisdom for Chris to know how to design the system so that it can be effectively implemented by the Bulgarian team and be flexible for the diverse needs of many organizations.

Faith Comes By Hearing
IMB
Filed Under: Language Software, Missions

Searching for Significance

September 27, 2017 by Leave a Comment

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We’re excited to announce that Wycliffe’s most recent devotional, “Searching for Significance”, is now available as a 10-day reading plan on YouVersion! “Searching for Significance” focuses on the search for something more in our lives — whether you call it significance, purpose, or meaning. There’s an innate desire in each of us for our life to matter, and this devotional explores that desire from a biblical perspective as we dive into God’s view of our worth. You can explore more stories and videos about this topic at wycliffe.org/significance. We encourage you to read the plan on YouVersion and share it with your family and friends. It’s an easy way to engage them in a conversation about God’s view of our significance and worth, while also sharing opportunities for them to engage with Wycliffe. Start the 10-day plan today!

Filed Under: Missions

New Open Doors

March 21, 2017 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

Partnerships are very important for the spread of the Gospel.  We are grateful that Chris can focus on developing software that accelerates Bible Translation and distribution.  Recently, his organization partnered with Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH) and Renew Outreach to make changes to Scripture App Builder that will allow them to open new doors to distribute Bible apps with text and audio to minority language communities.
FCBH has Bible recordings in 1,066 languages.  They distribute these recordings using the Bible.is app for Android and iOS devices (and others). This requires that the user install the app from an app store.  Due to licensing restrictions, the audio has to be streamed over the internet.  This is a huge barrier (and in some cases dangerous) to many minority language communities.  Renew Outreach works with FCBH to distribute the audio on lockable Micro SD cards and Wifi hotspots (LightStream) to be used in audio players and feature phones.

With the changes made to Scripture App Builder (we are collecting usage data and transmitting when the user is on-line), now FCBH and Renew Outreach will be able to create apps with the audio and text bundled into the app and distribute the app virally.

“Everyone is VERY excited about using these apps. I met one new friend in particular who runs a ministry in a restricted country. He’s very well networked in his nation, knows approximately 80% of the believers, of whom there are few. Thanks to this app, now they will all be able to get Bibles safely because it’s illegal to distribute Bibles otherwise and easy to get caught with print ones. … These are the kind of folks who will now be able to get Bibles in their language for the first time, unhindered by outside forces.  Praise God and thanks for your hard work on SAB!”
— Brandon Honselek, Vice President/COO, Renew Outreach

Filed Under: Language Software, Mobile

New Software, Come and Get it!

March 21, 2017 by Leave a Comment

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Chris has been working with colleagues on porting Scripture App Builder to macOS for the past couple of years. This program allows users to create Bible apps specific to a minority language that include synchronized text and audio that are easy to distribute. Best of all, the user can do this with no programming necessary. Before, users on Windows and Linux computers could only create Android apps. Now users of Mac computers can create both Android and iOS apps. We are very excited to announce the first release of Scripture App Builder for Mac!

“For the past two or three years, Bible translation teams around the world have been enthusiastically building customized Android apps to make the translated Scriptures available in both text and audio. But we kept getting asked, “So, when can we build apps for the iPhone as well so that more people in our region can get access to God’s Word in their language?” Now the waiting is over: Scripture App Builder for Mac has now been released – and translation teams can go ahead and build both Android and iOS apps. Thank you so much to David and Chris for all their hard work to make this possible!” (Richard Margetts, SIL Francophone Africa)

Scripture App Builder 3.3 for Mac / iOS

Filed Under: Language Software, Mobile

Let’s Release!

October 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment

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Chris and his team have released the first version of the Scripture App Publishing Service! After many months of design, development, user testing, and refinement, the service is now available to Wycliffe members. This release is a minimum viable product and they plan to enhance the product in short iterations based on user feedback.  There are currently 175 Android Apps in the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Google Play Store being managed by the Scripture App Publishing Service.

Filed Under: Language Software, Missions, Mobile

Let’s Celebrate!

October 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

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Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.
Psalm 115:1

The vision of Wycliffe is to see God’s Word made accessible to all people in the language that speaks to their heart. On September 23rd, we paused to celebrate the completion of Bibles and New Testaments for people groups who are getting God’s word for the very first time. You should have been there! Local pastors and ministry representatives paraded into the auditorium amid exciting music and applause carrying the precious Bibles. Here are some interesting statistics about this year’s celebration:

  • 25 languages communities
  • 7 complete Bibles
  • 17 New Testaments
  • 1 “Hybrid Bible” (NT + Genesis + Exodus in Takwane, Leviticus – Malachi in Portuguese — permission of Bible Society of Brazil)
  • 17 of 25 Scriptures available in a digital format
  • 7 of 25 have launched a website
  • 13 available in audio format
  • 7 available in Jesus film, Luke video or Genesis video
  • 7 available as Android or iPhone app
  • 12 are available in the YouVersion Bible App

Statistics are interesting, but read below about one of the language communities that received God’s Word.

The Lahu Si New Testament

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Upai Jasa, Wycliffe Thailand, recalls his reluctance to join the team working on this project.

“The Lahu Si New Testament translation began in the 1980s and by 2009, it was… well, it was a mess. Relationships among the team working on the project were broken, trust was nonexistent, many viewed the Lahu Si community in Thailand as being riddled with divisiveness. They saw Lahu Si churches split over the smallest disagreement, clans and communities also split.”

They had no idea how this project might move forward.  God did.  Read this whole story (and more stories) in the 2016 Scripture Celebration Information Sheets (page 9).

It goes right into my heart!

During our community testing as we were reading through the Lahu Si draft of Acts, a pux (the grandfather) said, “Even though I preach and pray in Lahu Na (a related language) in church, that doesn’t enter my heart as when I normally pray on my own in my own language. When I read the draft it goes right into my heart, as no other language can do.”

Filed Under: Missions

Let’s Hack!

October 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

hack_logo

Our team has recently released the first version of the Scripture App Publishing Service which automates the process of publishing Scripture Apps to the Google Play Store.  We currently have 175 apps managed in the Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc account. However, our first version is only a minimum viable product and has limited workflow process management to handle the interaction between end users, the build infrastructure, and the service administrator.  Only parts of the process can be automated so people have to be involved.

To help accelerate the development of the Scripture App Publishing Service, our team is partnering with Indigitous, a movement passionate about connecting people to Jesus using digital strategies. We have submitted a project to the 2016 Indigitous #Hack, a global missional hackathon focused on solving technology problems related to missions. Are you a software developer? Consider participating in the hackathon which is Nov 4 – 6. There are host cities as well as a virtual group.

Filed Under: Missions, Mobile

At Just the Right Time!

February 27, 2016 by 2 Comments

The vision of Wycliffe is to see God’s Word made accessible to all people in the language that speaks to their heart. Usually this might mean distributing a printed book. If there is a low literacy rate, then access to an audio version is important.

Audio versions of the Bible are recorded (often by Faith Comes By Hearing) and can be distributed on dedicated audio players like the Proclaimer. With the availability of smart phones, now a Scripture app created with Scripture App Builder can be distributed with the text and audio of the Bible bundled together.

What about early readers in the people group? Wouldn’t it be great if the text of the passage could be highlighted while the audio is being played?

In order to accomplish this, special timing files have to be created to let the software know which portions of the text and audio go together. Early attempts at this would take 45-60 minutes per chapter! For the Bible en Songoy de Gao App, this took weeks for a team of volunteers (listening to a language they didn’t know) to create these timing files.

Colleagues at Wycliffe searched for another way. Could software automate this process? Praise God, a solution was found! The Aeneas Library allows for the automated creation of the timing files. What used to take almost an hour can now be done in 3-5 seconds! How is this accomplished?

How does this thing work?

One word: Math

One Sentence (Layman Edition): A good deal of math and computer science, a handful of software engineering and some optimization tricks.

One Sentence (Pro Edition): Using the Sakoe-Chiba Band Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm to align the Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) representation of the given (real) audio wave and the audio wave obtained by synthesizing the text fragments with a TTS engine, eventually mapping the computed alignment back onto the (real) time domain. 

 (source)

Phew! The result is that, now, a whole New Testament can be processed in less than an hour instead of weeks. Wycliffe is preparing to publish hundreds of Scripture apps. Many of them already have audio. This new software process came at just the right time!

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Above: Bible Dedication of the Soŋay Language of Gao, Mali included the Bible en Songoy de Gao App

Right: John 3:16 in Soŋay Language of Gao with text highlighting synchronized with audio

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Filed Under: Missions, Mobile
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