International (MNN)—From April 27 through May 1, volunteer software developers will join together across the world—from Columbia, to the U.S., to France and India—online and at multisite locations, for unfoldingWord’s Hackathon, where they’ll work to solve some of the toughest technological problems for Bible translators of our time.
“A hackathon is a time for developers to come together and think about problems that are on the horizon, technology that’s on the horizon, things that are coming right now that the programmers have been curious about,” explains Birch Champeon. “In our case, a week of time dedicated to just focusing on a tough problem and coming up with software solutions for that particular problem.”
The Hackathon will explore solutions to four different problems:
- Delivering translators the information they need, when they need it: “We would give them the answers and resources that they can refer to without them having to wade through a large amount of information—that it would be filtered in such a way that it’s readily available and exactly what they need.”
- Multi-modal drafting: Bringing together the work of different translators, whether typed or audio translations, so they can easily be compiled and checked together.
- The feedback bottleneck: During trial editions of a translation, the drafted and checked text will go out into the community. “However, getting the information back, getting it into a useful form, and applying it to the translation is has always been a very difficult process, because sometimes it comes back as handwritten notes, sometimes it comes back as audio recordings, sometimes it comes back through a response on a phone. And so, how do we take all that disparate information, bring it together, and then make it into actionable items, so that the translators can improve their translation?”
- Distribution lag: Creating easy-to-use and nearly instantaneous ways of distributing and publishing scripture, so there can be “more publishing happening, and happening more frequently, so that there’s this continuous delivery of Bible translation.”
(Photo courtesy of unfoldingWord)
“These are key tools in the translator’s toolbox, whether it helps with drafting or with checking or with publishing,” says Champeon.
However, these problems can vary in complexities and nuance across regions—a solution that would work perfectly in one area of the world may not solve things in another area.
“That’s why we need developers from around the world working on these problems. If you have developers on the ground that are in these churches, that are currently translating the Bible, then they know the problems that the team is facing. They know the specific problems of their region and challenges there. So that’s why we want a global hackathon of developers coming in and preparing these tools to make them available to Bible translators around the world.”
Pray that this ministry of software development focused on getting the Word into people’s hands would continue to grow—that more software developers would hear about programs like the Hackathon and choose to contribute to the work.
Interested in getting involved? unfoldingWord is still accepting registrations.
“If you are a software developer that would love to work on this and help us, we would love to have your time and your skills applied to this ministry,” says Champeon. “There are many developers worldwide, sitting in churches, not knowing how their skills could be used for the kingdom of God.”
Register for the Hackathon at hackathon.technology.bible.
Header photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.
