Bible Translations Faster Today via Tech Advances

Technological advancements today have increased the speed and efficiency for Bible translation works, cutting work down by decades.

JAARS is one such organization dedicated to these developments by providing quality services for Wycliffe Bible Translators and others. Their mission is to provide the necessary hardware and software to accommodate the communications network and translations methodology needed in all languages.

The JAARS’ VSAT, an abbreviation for Very Small Aperture Terminal, is totally independent of existing infrastructures and uses small satellite dishes for sending information between two points, or from one point to several others. The project is a partnership amongst several mission groups that allows Bible translation work to continue even when electricity isn’t readily available from a generated source.

“We use solar panels to get the power for those, and the VSAT bounces off the satellite so, both are easily accessible and you don't need electricity or wires to do that. We can set up wireless networks and voiceover IP and things like that,” says JAARS’ Judy Bokelman.

Bokelman says they're launching a new software program for their translators. The software cuts the translation process down by nearly a decade by creating a 'rough draft' of a language based on a related-language. "So, we're doing 'adaptation,' which allows us to start out ahead--years ahead, actually--in the translation because we have a rough draft that we can talk with the people about and see where the language differences are in a related language, so that we begin the translation faster."

There are other software packages being used on the field that take non-Roman script and put them into workable form for the translators. Such non-Roman scripts are the encoding language font types of Chinese, Japanese, etc.

It's a complex language system that traditional translation programs have trouble decoding.

Approximately one-third of the languages that still need Bible translation are written with complex scripts.

As technology advances, the gap of regional communication will close and labor efforts will be cut in several folds. The way Bibles are being translated today is analogous to the way modern transportation has allowed people to travel half way across the world in just 20 hours.