February 16, 2010
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Dear Friends, Last month, I (Doug) was excited to represent Wycliffe at meetings with the United Bible Society (UBS) in Canada. I don’t often get excited about meetings, being more of a doer than a talker, but these held special interest for me. UBS is responsible for the creation of Paratext – the software program used by most Bible translators around the world, and the software we used during our work on the Fulfulde New Testament. I got to meet the Paratext developers and also got a sneak preview of their newest version. Nothing prepared me, though, for the incredible advances made by these gifted programmers. In fact, of the many applications that we teach our Africa field consultants, this one has jumped to number one on our priority list. What is more, the development team is going to try to release a beta (test) version in time for the fourth annual African consultant training workshop on March 15! What’s so special about this software? Here is just one of the new WOW features that I wish we had when translating the Fulfulde Bible: Translators can now see apparent misspelled words underlined in red. Ha! You thought that was easy? You might even say it is a  feature of any software program. Oops, the word rudimintary is underlined in red; it should be “rudimentary.” My computer knew this, of course, because it has a massive dictionary that contains every English word in all of its conjugated forms. Type a word that is not in the list and it gets underlined in red. Yet this is precisely what Bible translators cannot do because there is no such exhaustive dictionary in their newly written language. So the new software uses a new approach to guess misspelled words. It compares words with other words and looks for anomalies. By making its own index of all the words used so far in the translation, it can guess what the affixes are in the language. Even without a dictionary for English it could guess that -ment, and –ary are affixes that occur frequently. So when the word rudi-mint-ary shows up and it doesn’t find “-mint” in its list of affixes, it would (correctly) guess that the word is misspelled. If the computer guesses incorrectly, the translator tells it so, and the computer revises its guessing rules for the next time. Believe me, what goes on under the surface is incredibly complex, but the important thing is—it works! Praise God for this new tool and pray for a smooth introduction and training for the African consultants in March. We’ve been teaching the boys the Heidelberg Catechism, and a couple families here have decided to join us. Every other Sunday night we have a group of nine teenagers gathered to study, making catechism way more exciting than if it were our family alone. We are also reading the book “Do Hard Things” by Alex & Brett Harris for teenagers, and would highly recommend it for your own kids or grandchildren. College preparation for Henry is at its most intense right now, but he’s been awarded some outstanding scholarships and we are suddenly more hopeful that things will all come together. Thank you for praying! We appreciate your continued interest, prayers, and support, and hope that you can participate in our joy at the many advances that are simplifying the task of Bible translators. May God be glorified through the creativity of programmers and through the training that puts these tools in the hands of translators, that every language might have access to the Word of God. Partners in the Gospel, (Phil 1:5) Doug & Priscilla Higby
Prayer & Praise- Praise God for the powerful new Paratext software that will be taught to trainers from across Africa in March. Please pray for the developers as they try to get this version finalized and ready by mid-March.
- Thank God with us for Henry's scholarship awards and pray for the Lord's continued direction and leading for his future.
- Please pray for Doug and Jeff Heath who will be doing the consultant training in March. The course will be in Niger this year.
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