Cameroon Article
An article I wrote about Cameroon made it to the front page of Wycliffe International! You can read the whole thing here: Computer software improves alphabet development process.
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Cameroon Update #2
On Friday June 29th, David and I arrived at the DFW airport, back from five incredible weeks in Cameroon. The first half of our time in Cameroon was a blur of travel, interviews, and meeting new friends as we visited five language communities. We then returned to the capital city and attended the Wycliffe Africa Area Conference. And as a final project before we left, we produced a promotional video for CABTAL, the Cameroonian Wycliffe organization.
Bakossi
The first place we visited was Tombel, the largest town of the Bakossi language community. The Bakossi translation is a CABTAL project and is staffed entirely by Bakossi speakers. The translation team has only a few books of the New Testament left to translate and hopes to have the project completed by the year 2011. But the community has not been content to just wait until the translation is finished. Many churches are sponsoring adult literacy classes so that people will be able to read the Bible when it is available. Community leaders have also successfully started mother tongue literacy programs in the local government and private schools. And, portions of Scripture that have been translated are already being used in church services.
Joseph Nkwelle, one of the translators on the project, told me the story of the first time he read the translated Scripture in his church. Previously, all Scripture reading had been in English, and even though some members of the congregation knew English, Joseph said that they were not able to truly understand the Scripture in English. Joseph wanted to get the Scripture reading just right, so even though he was one of the best readers of Bakossi, he spent two weeks mastering the passage he was to read. Finally, the appointed Sunday came, and he read the passage. As soon as he had finished, spontaneous applause erupted from the congregation. Joseph was surprised because the congregation had never clapped for a Scripture reading before. He said that after the service, old women embraced him, men were smiling, and several people told him they felt the Bakossi Scripture should have come sooner.
While in Tombel, we were also privileged to listen to several songs by a choir association called BAPRESCA. BAPRESCA was formed by choir members who wanted to write and sing gospel songs in their mother tongue. The association has become incredibly popular, with over fifty groups totaling more than 1,500 members.
Ndop Cluster
From Tombel, we journeyed north to stay with the Groves, a Canadian family living in the village of Bambalang on the Ndop Plain. The Ndop Plain is home to ten related languages, and because of these languages’ similarities, a cluster approach has been chosen to speed the translation process. The plan is for several teams to do an in-depth study of some of the languages spoken on the plain and then use the lessons learned from those languages to expand the project to the other languages. In addition to staying with the Groves, we were also able to visit the Blackwells, who are from Ireland, in Bamunka, and the Hamms, who are also from Canada, in Bafanji. Right now, the teams are nearing completion of alphabet systems for the languages they are working in and plan to begin the translation process some time in the next few months.
One day, we accompanied the Groves to a very special meeting with the local language committee, which is a group of Bambalang residents who are giving the Groves guidance as they develop a writing system the Bambalang language. The purpose of this particular meeting was to show the committee a draft of the alphabet and get feedback on it. The Groves explained the chart and showed which letters stood for which sounds. The people in the committee could already read English, so they caught on very quickly. In fact, during that meeting we were able to see several members read their own language for the very first time!
Even though these three teams are from Europe and North America, they hope to eventually transition most of the translation effort to local people. We met two men named Pius and Novethan from Bambalang who are already working with the Groves. Novethan and Pius have been friends since they were very young, and they were both fishermen before God called them to pastoring and Bible translation. Since receiving that call, both have studied hard to prepare for the translation project. Novethan graduated last year from the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary in Ndu with a Bachelor of Theology degree and has already begun pastoring a church in Bambalang. Pius started the same program a year after Novethan did, and we were able to attend his graduation during our visit. Next year, Pius’ wife will also graduate from the same seminary.
Another highlight of the Ndop Cluster visit for me was discovering that all three teams have begun to use Fieldworks Language Explorer, the program I worked on last summer. Seeing them use parts of the program that I had written was a great encouragement, and I was even able to answer some questions the teams had about using the program.
Central Ring Cluster
The final translation project we visited was the Babanki project, a part of the Central Ring Cluster. The Babanki project is another CABTAL project. Like the Bakossi project, it is being run entirely by Africans. They already have a finished alphabet and are just beginning translation. They hope the translation process will go faster because they are able to use a computer program called Adapt It. Adapt It works by taking a finished translation in a related language and assisting a bilingual speaker to translate the text. In this case, the team is using a New Testament written in Kom. Kom is a language similar to Babanki, but most Babanki speakers cannot understand it. Adapt It goes through the completed translation word by word, asking the bilingual speaker what the Babanki equivalent of each word is. The program also remembers previous translations and can give suggestions on how to translate a word that has been translated before.
Adapt It provides a good starting point, but a word-by-word translation does not sound natural to a native speaker of Babanki. So, after a selection has been drafted with Adapt It, the text goes to a translation team. This team checks the translation to make sure it is accurate and sounds natural in Babanki. From there, the draft goes to a translation committee which does final checks.
We were able to see Adapt It in action and have posted a video of the process to David’s blog: Babanki Bible Translation.
Conference
We returned to Yaounde just in time to attend the Wycliffe Africa Area conference. This was the first conference for all of the African-led Wycliffe organizations. One of the major themes at the conference was church mobilization. The leaders at the conference all saw increasing church involvement as a major priority. They believe that Bible translation in Africa has changed from something that people from the West come in and do to something that Africans can and should do for themselves. They want the African Church to share this vision and to support it with their finances and involvement.
Post-conference
We brought a video camera with us on the trip, and much to my surprise, I ended up being the primary cameraman. The purpose of bringing the camera was to shoot short video segments to post on David’s blog. However, when we arrived back in Yaounde for the conference, the CABTAL General Director, Dr. Kenmogne, asked us to produce a promotional video for CABTAL to use when they visit seminaries in Cameroon. We were concerned that we might not be able to do it because we had not shot footage with a longer video in mind and we had only a week to produce the video. To further complicate matters, we started to have serious computer problems including the failure of our primary hard drive. Miraculously, we were still able to finish the video before we left, and CABTAL was very happy with the result.
Both the CABTAL video (Join the Move) and the shorter videos about the places we visited are available on David’s blog: The Translation Beat. We plan to post more videos in the coming weeks.
Tea
And what would a Wycliffe update from me be without a mention of tea? On the way to Ndu to see Pius’ graduation, I was pleasantly surprised when Dan Grove mentioned that there was a tea plantation on the way. I have been wanting to see one in person ever since I got interested in tea. So when we got to the plantation, we stopped, and I was able to look around. It was beautiful! And a few days later, I was even able to find a bag of tea that was grown on that very plantation. I’m enjoying some of it right now as I write this letter.
The Future
During the next couple weeks, I will be writing some articles for Wycliffe International based my experiences in Cameroon. After that, I will begin attending the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, which starts on the 19th. As I talked with people in Cameroon about the work they were doing, I have become even more excited about studying linguistics. The courses will be challenging, but I am looking forward to them.
Thank you for your prayers. May the Lord bless you.
In Cameroon
I’m in Cameroon now! Sorry for the lack of updates, but Internet access is hard to come by. We’ve been busy traveling all over the country and seeing the many Bible translation and literacy projects. So far, we’ve been to the Bakossi, Bambalang, Bamunka, Bafanji, and Babanki projects.
I’ve been very impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the translators and literacy teachers. What’s really exciting is that many of these projects are being led by Africans, not people who have come over from other countries. These communities have really been blessed with some highly talented people.
Bolt, Alan, and I have been interviewing, videoing, and photographing like crazy, and there’s still now way that we’ll be able to truly capture everything that’s happening here. Not that we won’t try. :-)
I’ve been shooting a lot of video, which is something new to both me and Bolt. It’s been fun, and I’ve also enjoyed doing some of the editing. If you’d like to see the fruits of our labor, we’re trying to post regular video updates on Bolt’s blog: The Translation Beat.
I hope to get a longer update put together some time in the next week or so.
Cameroon Update #1
These last few weeks have been very busy! On May 5, I graduated from LeTourneau University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering. The next day, I moved to Duncanville, Texas, to prepare for my trip to Cameroon, Africa, with Wycliffe International. I am staying with David Ringer, a friend from college who graduated two years ago. He now works full-time for Wycliffe International’s Communications department and is leading the Cameroon trip.
Since my arrival, I have been getting to know the people in the Communications department and have been learning about what I will be doing once I am in Cameroon. I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by everything I need to learn, but I am certain that God will give me the understanding to accomplish what He wants.
Interest in our trip continues to grow as more people find out about what we are doing. Wycliffe Canada, The Seed Company, and Wycliffe Norway have all specifically requested to use materials we will produce during the trip. Wycliffe Canada will even feature our work in an upcoming issue of their Word Alive magazine. Our work will also go into several international repositories for later use by any of the about 50 Wycliffe organizations.
We do not know the exact timing for everything on the trip, but we have been able to put together a rough schedule:
May 21: Depart from DFW Airport
May 23: Meet up with Alan Hood (a photographer from Wycliffe Canada) in Paris
May 24: Arrive Yaoundé via Douala
May 26 or 27: Drive to the Bakossi language community
May 30 or 31: Drive to Bamenda to visit Ndop and Central Ring clusters
June 12: Return to Yaoundé
June 13-20: Wycliffe Africa Area conference in Yaoundé
June 21-27: Another village trip (we do not know where just yet)
June 28: Depart from Yaoundé
June 29: Arrive back at DFW
We hope to have Internet connectivity while in Cameroon, and I plan on sending regular updates via email. David and I are also excited about trying out “video blogging.” We’ll be posting short video clips about Bible translation and related ministries in Cameroon on his blog: The Translation Beat.
I still can hardly believe all the opportunities God has given me–I never would have expected to be traveling to Cameroon right after I graduated! I am excited to go, and I’m sure God has great plans for this trip.
Thank you again for your prayers and support.
May the Lord bless you.
Wycliffe Trip to Cameroon
Well, it looks like I couldn’t stay away from Wycliffe for very long! This summer, I will be traveling with a small team to Cameroon, Africa for about a month and a half. We are being sent by Wycliffe’s international communication office to gather information about the ongoing Bible translation work for the Bantu family of languages.
This trip will be quite a bit different than last summer. Last summer, I did programming all the time; this summer, I will be doing journalism. That may seem like a strange change, but I’ve been interested in writing and journalism for a while now, and I spent the last two years here at LETU working as a staff writer for the school newspaper.
My support letter has all the details of the trip.
I’m really excited about what God has in store for me this summer!
Summer Wycliffe Update #2
Dear Family and Friends,
Things are going great here in Dallas! We are continuing to make steady progress on the FieldWorks Language Explorer program. In the weeks since I last wrote you, we have made many significant improvements.
This last week, we prepared a “test release” of our software in order to get feedback and testing on the many recent changes we have made. This test release will allow us to get feedback from a wider range of people than our usual internal testing and is just one of the many things we’re doing to make sure the finished product will be as useful to field workers as it can possibly be.
In the weeks leading up to the test release, we did our best to resolve any serious, crash-causing bugs. This was a great opportunity for me to become more experienced with some of the more complicated internals of the program, and I was able to fix a number of important bugs.
The “Help” links project I mentioned in the previous update is nearly complete. With almost 450 working help links, I usually only have to make help-related changes every few days. My current projects cover a wide range of areas. I’ve been working on everything from making small wording changes in dialog boxes to debugging hashmap corruption deep inside the C++ GUI generation code.
I know some of you are probably curious about what a typical work day looks like for me. So, to help with that, I brought a camera to work last week and took a few pictures.
Every morning starts with the entire department gathering for a brief devotion and a time of prayer. After that, we have a stand up meeting where everyone gives a summary of what they’ve been working on. Here, Eric explains the progress he made on an issue the day before. Shown in this picture are: Mike, Arin, Susanna, Eric, Michael, and Dan.
We use sticky notes in conjunction with an issue tracking system called JIRA to organize the tasks that need to be completed. JIRA is good for keeping track of the details and history of an issue, but sticky notes make it easy for us to see what needs to be done at a glance. This picture shows the tasks currently up for grab. When a developer decides to work on a task, they move the sticky note from the white board to their desk.
Here’s a shot of my desk during a typical coding session. You can see a few sticky notes on my monitors. Those are the tasks I selected from the board to work on. To the right, you can also see some of my tea set. I love fine tea, so I brought my tea collection to the office and have started making tea every afternoon for me and a few other tea drinkers in the department.
In order to make communication easier and to facilitate “pair programming,” all of the desks of the core programming team are in one area. This arrangement has worked out very well and really does make it easy to ask people questions and get input on potential solutions to problems.
Please continue to pray for the team as we work on this project. Please also pray for God’s guidance in my future plans. I am seriously considering taking classes at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (their campus is also at the Dallas Center, where I work) after I finish my degree at LeTourneau University. These classes would give me a basic understanding of linguistics and would be useful for a future career with Wycliffe, if I decide to pursue that.
May the Lord bless you.
Summer Wycliffe Update #1
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.
Wycliffe Internship Details
I’ve already posted some on my summer internship at Wycliffe, but I’ve got more details now:
I’ll be spending this summer in Dallas working for Wycliffe Bible Translators as a programming intern. They’re going to put me on the core programming team for a piece of software called FieldWorks Language Explorer. It’s basically an electronic dictionary-thesaurus that will make translation work much faster and more accurate than it’s been in the past. The techie details are: C#, Visual Studio 2005, Extreme Programming, and Pair Programming.
I’m really excited about this summer! I get to work in exactly the sort of programming environment I was hoping for on a really cool project, and not only that, but the end result is that more people will have the Word of God in their own language! I’m very thankful to God for giving me such an amazing opportunity, and I pray that I will allow Him to use me to accomplish great results.
If you want more information about this or would like to be a part of what I’ll be doing this summer, take a look at my Support Letter.
Wycliffe Summer
What started with a tour last November has resulted in a summer internship. This summer, I’ll be working at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, TX doing programming work for Wycliffe Bible Translators. I don’t know all of the details yet, but I know that I’ll be on the core programming team for a piece of software called FieldWorks Language Explorer.
There will be lots of new things to learn. The application is written in C# for Windows using Visual Studio 2005. That’s a language and programming environment I’ve never used before, but I will get some experience using them later this semester for Software Systems. I’ve heard good things about the language, and it will be neat to learn something new and get a fresh perspective on software development. All of the software there is developed using the Extreme Programming methodology. I’ve read about it before and it seems to have some really good ideas. One of the most obvious differences from other methodologies is that pair programming is used. This means that I’ll be sharing a computer with one of their full-time workers. I’ve done pair programming a few times for projects at LETU and it has always worked really well. I’m looking forward to see how it works in the “real world.”
However, the pair programming means the end of an era for me. After talking some with my supervisor for this summer, I decided that my preference for the Dvorak keyboard would cause too much confusion if I’m going to be constantly sharing computers. So, as of today, I’m switching back to Qwerty. I’ve been using Dvorak for about a year now, and according to a typing test I just took, I’m up to 80 WPM. This post is the longest thing I’ve typed in Qwerty since I made the switch, and I’m nowhere near 80 WPM. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly I’m able to get back to my old typing speed with Qwerty (which I think was actually a little higher than I got with Dvorak).
Please pray for my internship. I still need to find housing, financial support (the internship is on a volunteer basis), and work out lots of other little details. But most importantly, pray that I will allow God to make full use of me in this opportunity to use my skills to make a very real and practical impact in the effort to make the Word of God available to everyone.
I’m excited! :-)
Hi there. My name is Curtis Hawthorne, but most of my friends call me Fjord.