Vernacular Media Newsletter EMDC Special #92
2019.06
Date:
Original email campaign link:
Table of Contents
EMDC 2019 Technology ReportParatext Lite — Doug Higby
Glyssen and HearThis — Paul Nelson
Multiplying Media Ministry with the New Mobiles, Media, and Ministry Curriculum — Keith Williams
Missional Artificial Intelligence (AI): 21st Century Applications, Recommendations, and Translation — Tim K & Dr. Daniel Whitenack
Practical Tips for Engaging Your Audience with Scripture Apps — David G & Ron L
Multi-Language Digital Education: An Innovation Driven by Need — Geoffrey Hunt
Printing Bibles on Demand: What is Changing? — Alan Conner
Author, Distribute, and, Translate Your Content with Bloom — Doug Higby
Disciple Tools: Collaborative Software for Disciple-making Movements — Chris Chasm
Taste&See! — Jaap Feenstra & Christine Harrison
Tools and Methods for Offline File Distribution — Lars Gunnarsson, Josiah Palusky, Christopher Vollo
Progressive Web Apps with WordPress — Haeme Ulrich
(LUMO) A Culture Addicted to Video – What Role Does the Bible Play? — Jonathan Huguenin
Scriptoria – Scripture App Publishing Service — Chris Hubbard & Paul Nelson
New Gadgets and Technology in Scripture Engagement
Super Bible — Bob Arend
Oral Bible Translation as a Vehicle for Evangelism, Disciple-Making, and Scripture Engagement — Dusty Hill & Miriam Pugh
Scripture App Builder: How to Improve the Way You Build and Promote Your Apps — Richard Margetts
Minute at the Mic
1. EMDC 2019 Technology Report
EMDC 2019 took place from April 3 to April 15. Doug Higby, Language Technology Use Coordinator for SIL, compiled this report with the help of Matthew Lee and Kent Schroeder. The Vernacular Media Newsletter appreciates Doug allowing us to share his report with our audience. This issue of VMN represents a point-in-time "snapshot" of Doug's report. In the future, the "live" version of the report may be amended. Contact Doug Higby if you are interested in following the "live" version.
Paratext Lite — Doug Higby
Paratext Lite for Android is a companion to Paratext that is an excellent tool for handling the 3 R’s of a translation project: Reading, Reviewing, and Revising.
Reading access to the project can be given to an observer who reads the text to give feedback. A simple Android phone will work for this case.
Reviewing is the case where the user is reviewing the text to give feedback and to answer questions. This can be used during community checking with the benefit that the text can be updated after it is distributed. Reviewers can use either phone or tablet.
Revising is suited for translators in power-challenged environments who need to make changes to the text based on feedback from testing or consultants. In the case of heavy editing, it is important to add a Bluetooth keyboard.
Paratext Lite is not recommended for drafting/exegesis at this point because of its limited toolset. For that, you’ll want to use the full version of Paratext. Paratext Lite is available for download from the Google Play Store. A video of the EMDC presentation is available on Vimeo.
Glyssen and HearThis — Paul Nelson
HearThis is a utility that can extract Scripture text from Paratext to easily create voice recordings that can be used for community testing of Scripture. Individual phrases are identified so that you can do the recording in chunks short enough to record in one pass. These recorded texts can be re-recorded as needed and shared with the community to evaluate the impact and quality of the translated Word.
Glyssen is a newer application that can act as an intermediary between Paratext and HearThis to manage multi-voice dramatized recordings, guiding teams through the process of linking actors with speaking parts. Glyssen can cut four days of script development into four hours. Of course, multi-voice recordings are best left to complete, stable texts.
Glyssen can now read live Paratext 8 project data or a DBL bundle. It is important to run checks on the data first, especially chapter/verse and quote marker checks. Glyssen uses your Paratext project’s quotation settings and information about the size of your recording team to break the text not only by sentence but also in places where the actor should change or the manner of speaking should change. The system uses the project quotation settings to identify starting and ending points of quotes when available. In places where the speaker is ambiguous, Glyssen will give you the opportunity to adjust the script before recording.
The completed script is normally used as part of Faith Comes by Hearing's recording preparation process for professional recording. However, it can also be imported into HearThis, which can use the script for multiple-voice recording. The HearThis recording can be exported in various formats and chunks for later use, or as timing files for Scripture apps.
Multiplying Media Ministry with the New Mobiles, Media, and Ministry Curriculum — Keith Williams
The Mobile Ministry Forum has developed a free online curriculum to explain how to do ministry using mobile devices and media. Are you unsure how to use social media to connect with your audience? Do you have trouble making a short video? This course has 41 lessons dealing with four main topics:
Foundations: Principles and practices for developing media, materials, and strategy that lead to successful follow-up and discipleship
Mobile Ministry: Learn about the capabilities and limitations mobile technology provides and how to adapt your media ministry efforts.
Social Media: Learn to connect with your audience via social media so you can expand your reach among almost any people you want to target.
Do-It-Yourself Media: Learn to create authentic, contextually-relevant media that can reach thousands.
I’ve already watched a brief video from the Media track that gave me an “Aha!” moment about making simple videos. I can’t wait to try it out! Find the courses at mobmin.org/train or write to info@mobileministryforum.org
Missional Artificial Intelligence (AI): 21st Century Applications, Recommendations, and Translation — Tim K & Dr. Daniel Whitenack
The presenters explained the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and explored the possibilities in mission work. AI includes techniques such as object recognition, classification, regression (predicting one thing from another thing), forecasting (predicting one thing from a previous version of the same thing), recommendation (predicting missing information), and clustering (predicting structure in data). AI takes input and runs through an algorithm that uses lots of data to update a model definition to give you a better answer. It does require structured data to be successful. The focus of AI is on augmentation, not automation. Some Missional AI use cases are:
Computer-assisted translation checking
Discipleship tracking tools
Use of chatbots and media recommendation
Aggregation of data for progress.Bible to show global translation progress
...and others. If these topics interest you, you can attend the first Global Missional AI Summit, March 26-28, 2020, in Bangkok. Sign up for their mailing list for more details: https://bit.ly/missionalai
Practical Tips for Engaging Your Audience with Scripture apps — David G & Ron L
Things to consider when building Scripture apps using Scripture App Builder:
Artwork – Hire an artist if needed, use appropriate colors for the culture, and do testing.
Topical menus can be used to navigate to passages instead of forcing users to start working directly with chapter/verse structure. Either text or images can be used.
Glossary hyperlinks are important; however, some users may be distracted by too many of them. SAB now allows more experienced readers to turn off linked text in the app.
Front and back matter can often be overlooked in an app. Consider including introductions, glossary, maps, diagrams, and images, etc. One creative idea was the inclusion of papyri images to show the authenticity of the source text.
Audio – choose whether to integrate audio with the app, download it from the Internet, or distribute it via SD card. This feature helps with reading. Make sure your timings are correct for syncing.
Embedded video shows a thumbnail of the video in the location you choose in the text, and you can set it to play in place or to jump to Youtube to play it instead.
Audience – design the app for a narrower audience. You may need different apps for different target groups. An example was given of a very popular app that contained the "Lives of the Prophets" collection for an unchurched audience. You can repackage apps for different purposes, such as a Psalms app that stands alone.
Languages – Recognize that your audience is multilingual and provide them with selectable interface languages. Get permission for Scriptures to include in other languages. You can now embed a Keyman keyboard into the app to enable easier typing and searching.
Multi-Language Digital Education: An Innovation Driven by Need — Geoffrey Hunt
It’s not surprising that book-poor communities are places where illiteracy is common. In Ghana, like many areas, buying, printing, and storing textbooks can be expensive and impractical. Over the past 2 years, Geoffrey Hunt has developed a collection of multilingual educational resources that can be freely shared on microSD or USB drives. This includes many documents (in color), dictionaries, low-res videos, images, and apps that are freely available and licensed to be used either in the classroom with a projector or at home (on smartphones or computers). The intention is to provide a more practical way to make educational resources available to the local communities. Three languages were used for the initial implementation. They were Hanga and Gonja (two local Ghanaian languages), and English (the national language of Ghana). The existing content contains nearly 900 separate educational items that take up just over 5 gigabytes and you can contact Geoffrey to get a copy of it. He recommends 8GB Class 10 microSD cards for ease of use and expandability, although 16GB may be the smallest size available. He hopes that somebody else will create similar resources for French and other national languages that could be shared widely, and then educational resources for local languages can be added in the same phone-friendly formats. Geoffrey uses a special Custom Office Template to produce PDF documents that can be easily read on small smartphone screens. The proliferation of Android phones and microSD cards makes this a viable approach for education.
Printing Bibles on Demand: What is Changing? — Alan Conner
Print-on-demand is alive and well for Scripture publications. At last year’s EMDC, I heard that on-demand printing was available for Scripture that was in the Digital Bible Library, so I went onto Amazon and ordered the New Testament in the Malian language we had translated. It arrived, hot off the Digital Bible Society press a couple of days later. The size was much bigger than the thin-paper typeset Bibles, but I was impressed with the format and presentation. Now there are multiple sites that do print-on-demand: Bethany Press, Virtual Storehouse, Digital Bible Society, Bibles On Demand, and Snowfall Press. Snowfall is especially known for its handling of diglots. Printing processes have evolved and the quality is getting better. This could be an excellent way to distribute to the diaspora, and it certainly resolves the problem of warehousing and distribution!
Author, Distribute, and Translate Your Content with Bloom — Doug Higby
Bloom lowers the bar for publishing books. It handles copyright and licensing information, image resizing, fonts, page layout, and file storage for the user, allowing them to focus on what they do best: author text. Bloom continues to add new features while keeping its simple interface. Books can contain multiple languages, and the languages desired can be selected when publishing to create bi- or trilingual booklets. It also can record audio for audio books such as epubs or Bloom Reader books. For literacy, it handles decodable books and leveled readers.
Any organization that has booklets they wish to distribute in multiple languages should take a serious look at Bloom. The same software to produce the booklet doubles as a translation interface to allow people to translate and produce the booklet in new languages. The default page layouts are simple, but custom page layouts can be created to follow your booklet format. One of the biggest caveats with Bloom is the fact that it doesn’t support text flow from one page to the next. Of course, that keeps things very simple — just the way Bloom was designed to be. Your picture never floats to the next page!
This year Bloom has new enterprise features that include branding, quizzes (for use in Bloom Reader), sign language support, and custom bookshelves in the library. Access to enterprise features is for paying clients or for partners. SIL members can already activate those features by following instructions in the software. Other organizations may contact SIL-LEAD to request them.
Disciple Tools: Collaborative Software for Disciple-making Movements — Chris Chasm
Technology helps many domains beyond linguistics and translation. If you are managing an evangelism or discipleship team and maintaining contact with seekers, disciple.tools can help you manage the movement and make sure that no one falls through the cracks. A sister tool called kingdom.training helps with the process of creating and managing the toolset to equip your team. The third tool, Zúme is designed to take small groups further, through existing discipleship content or by adding your own.
Taste&See! — Jaap Feenstra & Christine Harrison
A new Interactive digital platform designed to increase Scripture engagement in your community through a catalog of SE tools
At past EMDCs there has always been the talk of creating some kind of marketplace and sharing platform to let field workers know what is available in a particular language for ministry. In addition, content providers were wanting to make their content available for adaptation into new languages and contexts. There have been a number of conversations and attempts to get something like this going, but I was quite impressed by Taste&See’s well-thought-out plan for Scripture engagement. It connects people with the media and tools that are most appropriate for their ministry context. It is on the verge of release, and the team working on it has thought through every aspect of the site carefully.
The site’s target audience is local churches and missional workers. The process begins with an assessment of the target cultural and spiritual context using Wayne Dye’s Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement. Then, based on the result, the website recommends potential resources that respond to the greatest needs. This works because new resources that are added to the site are evaluated and tagged according to their strengths. Then those resources that target the areas of weakness are recommended according to the client’s profile. In this way, the website becomes an expert guide for Scripture engagement, helping the community focus on their weakest conditions for SE. The site also hopes to provide space for discussion and community support around ministry topics. The current location is just a placeholder at tastesee.org, but you can check back later to see when it goes live. Or, if you want to participate in the beta trials, please contact Jaap Feenstra at jaap_feenstra@sil.org.
Tools and Methods for Offline File Distribution — Lars Gunnarsson, Josiah Palusky, Christopher Vollo
Imagine sharing an audio Bible, JESUS film, Scripture app, or other content with anyone around you on a bus, at church, or at a translation office. BibleBox, Lightstream, and ConnectBox are three different solutions for distributing digital resources to users’ devices within wireless range.
BibleBox is the least expensive option and can be built with commercially available hardware, but the device used for the ultra-portable version of the BibleBox that you may know is no longer being manufactured. The new make-it-yourself BibleBox runs on a tiny Raspberry Pi computer and offers more features than the previous version. Look here for instructions.
The LightStream Pocket, a device developed by Renew Outreach, allows users to access content over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It has a highly customizable interface, a built-in battery, and can copy and lock content onto microSD cards. The LightStream also records real-time analytics and has a chat feature. This device is the closest replacement for the feature set of the older TP-Link BibleBox, yet it surpasses it in every way. The LightStream Pocket costs about $80.
The ConnectBox is another larger but cheaper ($70) option by Global Tech Team with its own set of features to make distribution easier. It offers icon-only browsing for less-literate users and offers a ‘Netflix’ mode for streaming content, remembering where the user left off.
With each of the three options, the amount of content you can offer is only limited by the amount of storage you install.
Progressive Web Apps with WordPress — Haeme Ulrich
A progressive web app is a website that behaves just like an app on your smartphone. It stores local web content for offline browsing and hides the browser it is in so that it behaves like its own app. If you have a WordPress site, you can install and easily configure the ProgressiveWP plugin. Progressive Web Apps are currently supported on desktop and Android devices. Users will then be able to get notifications from your site on their desktop or Android device.
(LUMO) A Culture Addicted to Video - What Role Does the Bible Play? — Jonathan Huguenin
Every year I have at least one big takeaway from EMDC, and this year LUMO was it! We have a situation where there is a need to produce additional discipleship media in a language in West Africa where I worked previously. However, due to the security situation, it is not possible to travel there. We have the New Testament recording that was done by Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH), but the only visual media is the JESUS film that was produced 20 years ago and desperately needs to be revised. What to do? Well, it turns out that FCBH has partnered with the producers of LUMO to create localized versions of their videos of the four Gospels. The videos are designed in such a way that the soundtrack is the complete unabridged Scripture text, set in authentic scenes and performed by top actors. Check out the trailer on their website:
“These stunningly innovative films, currently available in over 100 languages, are easily adapted for a global audience. Anyone, anywhere in the world can fully experience their translation of Scripture overlaying the stunningly visual representations of the life of Christ set against the backdrop of an authentic rendition of first century Palestine.”
See https://lumoproject.com
Towards the end of the session, I was wondering what work was needed to get these videos produced in the target language. But their website showed that the Gospel of Mark had already been produced in it. Thankfully, the rest are also in the process--all that is needed to produce them is the audio track from the Gospels. The FCBH team can independently align the audio and video together, and the results are pretty good from my initial analysis. You can find out what languages are already available and watch them at https://live.bible.is. If you are in the Gospels and the version you select has video available, it will appear at the top of the page or screen. This NIV page is an example.
Those interested in obtaining the films can fill out a short form at: www.fcbh.org/gf-for.
Lastly, the title of this session didn’t do it justice. Rather than bemoaning video addiction, we experienced firsthand how watching the Scriptures opened up meaning that we tend to pass right over in print or audio. That’s why they say, “seeing is believing!”
Scriptoria: Scripture App Publishing Service — Chris Hubbard & Paul Nelson
Scriptoria is a Scripture app publishing service that automates the workflow for publishing Scripture apps. Not only does it reduce the amount of work involved in submitting apps online, but it also aims to keep them up to date as new versions of Scripture App Builder are released. Since Android is changing all the time, existing apps need to be brought up to date if they are to continue to function. I’ve experienced this issue firsthand when I discovered that an app I had uploaded a year ago would constantly crash on my newer phone. By recompiling the app on a newer version of SAB and uploading it again, the problem went away. Now, the Scriptoria service will handle these updates for you. When a new version is generated, the owner will be alerted to test the newly compiled app and verify that everything is working. After verification, it will be updated for all users.
This service went live during EMDC. SIL is also making it available to other organizations, where it can be set up and customized to work with their own organization’s app store. The publishing service is initiated inside of SAB, which will lead you to create an account at https://app.scriptoria.io. On that page there is also a link to request that your organization be added, allowing you to publish from your store.
New Gadgets and Technology in Scripture Engagement
TVs for Jesus showed a system they developed to stream content to TVs in a mission hospital, or to tablets that are securely locked to the patient’s bed. Their system uses a Raspberry Pi server and Open Source software to serve up video content in multiple languages.
An Integrated Bible Engagement Platform (IBEP) was developed by the Netherlands Bible Society with three main goals: distributing Bibles, engaging people with Scripture, engaging people with your organization. Their platform creates feature-rich web and app clients to promote end-user Scripture engagement. You can contact them at info@bibleplatform.co
Bible Scroll is an SD card copying system that uses readily available parts and a Raspberry Pi to duplicate up to nine SD cards simultaneously. It comes as part of a kit in a small zipper case. It involves using a computer to configure the process through a web interface. It can be simple enough for computer users, but I’d be a bit concerned about sending this off to my overseas friends for fear they’d get stuck in the process. But for any of you who have average computer knowledge, it is a great and inexpensive SD card copying system. You can sign up at http://digitalbibles.net and request more information from the developers.
HopeTechGlobal has an excellent design team, and this year they surprised us with the Lost Sheep. A cute and cuddly little lamb that doubles as an audio player. Touch its nose to turn it on, and then squeeze the front and back legs to advance and go back or adjust the volume. It charges through a micro-USB port. They continue to produce their Kalumi mini combo LED lamp/audio player. It is still a great product and is featured on their website.
Translation Recorder, Translation Exchange: You’ve heard of Render, an oral Bible translation platform that has been gaining popularity. Wycliffe Associates has developed its own open source oral translation software to allow people to do oral Bible translation on an Android tablet. Translation Exchange is a small server in development to work with Translation Recorder. It is designed to allow oral translators and narrators to securely store their audio files and to invite community checking and review. It will run on low-power, low-cost computing devices such as Raspberry Pi. Both apps aim to be simple to use, have minimal text interface, and give attention to audio quality.
Super Bible — Bob Arend
It was just a matter of time, but now the great Super Bible comic book series that has been present at previous EMDCs is now available as a smartphone app. With over 72 Bible-based comic books produced by Kingstone and licensed for translation into other languages, the content is ready for you to localize for your target group. You will be provided with PDF forms to fill in the translations (translating from English), and then the staff at Wandering Sheep Productions and volunteers will help format and produce the comics from the translated text.
To aid in the distribution of the Super Bible comics, there is a companion Super BibleBox that runs on a Raspberry Pi. It will connect to the internet and then have new and updated content available for wireless distribution to all who pass by.
Oral Bible Translation as a Vehicle for Evangelism, Disciple-Making, and Scripture Engagement — Dusty Hill & Miriam Pugh
The Alagwa project in Tanzania shared their oral translation approach using Render. They pointed out that the oral approach is about a different method of working with a very oral community and using an oral translation process. According to the participants, key benefits are increased naturalness and the fact that translators without much education are empowered to translate and aren’t limited by problems of orthography or reading difficulties. The approach isn’t intended to circumvent literacy and it doesn’t necessarily speed up the process — which comes with its own technical hurdles. It is especially challenging for consultants, and the team added a technical advisor to their workflow to simplify the work of the translation consultants. This project sees OBT as a vehicle for evangelism, disciple-making, and Scripture engagement. The translators and community checkers are processing spiritual truth and having their understanding of Jesus completely challenged by their interactions with the Word of God.
Scripture App Builder: How to Improve the Way You Build and Promote Your Apps — Richard Margetts
With thousands of apps being produced by Scripture App Builder today, some of them really stand out as being well designed. What can we do to improve our apps? The first thing is to follow the checklist that is built into the SAB help menu. It has 26 items that you should work through and resolve before publishing. Following that will get you far, but here are some specifics that were highlighted in the presentation.
Much attention needs to be given to graphic design: This includes your icons, borders, and splash screens. Many new default icons have been added, as well as many default borders to surround the Scripture text (where that is expected). With the new slide-out navigation drawer in SAB, you can also choose an image to display at the top of the drawer. Although there are many more built-in options, you are encouraged to involve local designers.
To help with searching and note-taking, you can now embed a Keyman keyboard inside the app! You can search keyman.com for an existing keyboard, or design your own with Keyman Developer.
Embed videos at the head of different sections; or once the Lumo videos are available in the language, you could embed each chapter’s video via online streaming at the top of each page.
For creating Bible story books, there are amazing resources at International Media Services (IMS). On their website, you can find SAB templates which you download and then tell SAB where to find them in settings. You would select a range of books, right-click them, and “Create Slideshow Videos” with the downloaded templates. The sound and motion effects will be applied correctly, assuming you have good timing files for your audio.
One exciting new feature is the ability to use push notifications to all app users using Firebase and its cloud messaging web interface. You could encourage users to read the Christmas story on Dec. 24, or send a “Book added” announcement.
Many more tips were given to improve the discoverability of your app and to improve what is called “conversion” — from people landing on the app page to people installing the app. Follow the SAB checklist carefully, and look at what others have done. Let’s do all we can to get people using the Scriptures!
Minute at the Mic
Many people came forward for a one-minute slot at the mic. On the last day, slots were even cut down to 30 seconds to accommodate everybody! Most of the tech-related ones were featured elsewhere in this document. Here are just a few notable tech-related ones that weren’t covered:
Story Producer App - This app is in development and will facilitate audio translation of Bible story videos. With the app, any language group can use an Android smartphone to translate from a set of Bible stories without a computer. They already own phones, the cost is low, and the app is simple to use. For info about the release, send an email to SPapp_info@sil.org.
Reading App Builder Tutorials — This YouTube Playlist contains five videos that help you build reading apps with RAB.
ScriptureEarth.org continues to grow, with over 2,300 languages represented now. They’d love to add your resources as well.
Kalaam Media is still in the business of helping teams make localized websites with Scripture and media, and provides hosting for them and management tools. Contact Jim for more information.