Greetings from Dallas! Life has been very busy these last few weeks. I finished my Resident Assistant duties at LeTourneau University the morning of May 8th, moved into my new home that same evening, and started work in the Language Software Development department the next morning. I am staying with a family that lives just a few minutes away from the Center, so my morning commutes are nice and short.

The first week of work was a bit different from normal because the department was involved in putting on a conference about our software, Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx). Linguistic consultants from all over the world had gathered to receive training on FLEx and give feedback for future development. The conference was a great success; everyone was very impressed with the software and was eager to start using it. Susanna, our analyst, wrote down hundreds of potential improvements we can make.

During the conference, I had an opportunity to talk with a number of the linguists. One of them, Ron Moe, told me about a process he had created called DDP (Dictionary Development Process). Field workers will usually try to create a dictionary of some sort during the process of Bible translation, but often these dictionaries will only have about 5,000 words. Some reach up to 12,000 words, but that could take 20 years of work. The problem with these relatively small sets of words is that the translation can end up sounding like “baby talk” because the limited vocabulary does not tap into the full expressive capabilities of the language. However, using Ron’s process, a small team can create a basic dictionary with as many as 20,000 words in just two weeks! Not only that, but because the words are collected using a structure called “semantic domains,” a thesaurus can be easily constructed at the same time as the dictionary. FLEx has been designed with this process in mind and includes a section that is specifically set up to be used during a DDP word collection session. If you are interested in more information about this revolutionary new process, check out its webpage.

Another interesting topic I learned about at the conference was the importance of academic publications. SIL (the nonprofit academic organization Wycliffe members work under) has an extremely high reputation in the academic linguistic community for their language research and publications. This research not only enables translators to do a better job because they have a better understanding of the language, it is also highly valued by the governments that sponsor SIL to work in their countries. Because these academic publications are so critical, FLEx has capabilities to make producing them easier than ever. Using information that the field worker will have already entered into the program during the course of their research, an academic paper called a “grammar sketch” can be generated with just a few clicks. Dictionary information can also be easily exported and prepared for publication.

After the conference was over, I got my computer set up and was able to start programming. My first major project has been to add “Help” buttons to most of the dialog boxes and menus in the application. Marlon, one of my coworkers in the department, is writing the documentation, so I just had to link everything together. Good documentation is critical to the success of a program like this. Many of our users will be in places with limited communications, and their only source of help on the program may be the included documentation. So, it is important that the documentation be thorough and simple to access. Working on the Help system has been a great project for me. It has given me exposure to most parts of the program and has been a great way to learn how to use the development tools. When I started work, there were maybe a dozen or so Help links in the application. Over the last several weeks, I have been able to increase that number to over 400. I have also worked on several other aspects of the program including restructuring several dialog boxes to make them more intuitive to use, adding some extra functionality, and fixing several bugs.

I greatly appreciate your prayers and financial support. Please continue to pray for our team as we work on this software. October 13 is the planned release date for version 1.0 of FLEx, and we are already starting to feel the time crunch. It is difficult to figure out which features we have time to add and which will have to wait a year for our next big release. Starting next week, we are also beginning a major migration of our development environment to a newer version. This upgrade will give us a number of new features, but also has the possibility of interrupting programming time for several days.

God definitely has His hand in what we are doing. I have been amazed at how much a relatively small team has been able to accomplish. Even personally, I know that I could not have gotten up to speed as quickly as I have on my own. I am still very excited to be a part of something that will have a major impact on Bible translation!

If you would like more information on FLEx, it has a website with screenshots and even a free download of the program. Also, feel free to email me if you have any other questions about what all I am doing this summer.

May the Lord bless you.