Postscript

We’re moving from Kenya to South Africa, soon.  You can read more about our move in our June newsletter. We’re excited about the new ministry opportunities that this move will open to us.  Utilizing the better internet available where we will live, Jeff will be serving Wycliffe staff all over Africa as a remote/roving IT tech.  I will be located closer to a couple of potential ministry partners, who may be able to help me better serve Africa with publicity media.

We’ve been busy with preparations for this move the last couple of months.  The big things–the sale of our vehicle and household items and obtaining our long-term visas–are now behind us. Our long-term visas for South Africa were approved last Tuesday, and since then, we’ve been busy packing.

Today, we reserved tickets for a Saturday departure to Johannesburg. We’ll spend a few weeks with Wycliffe colleagues orienting and getting some paperwork completed before moving to our final destination–Cape Town.

Please pray for us as we complete our last preparations for our Saturday departure.  We’ll be keeping you posted on our progress.

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Our friend, Jon, came to Nairobi in February to help the IT team for about a month. He’s written about his experience on his blog. You may be interested in reading his observations.

Jon’s Blog: http://itsnotajob.blogspot.com/

Photos by Jon Limmer
Take a look at these posts that include Jeff:
* Are we there yet?
* Date with Freedom
* Something’s Bugging me
* Once again, stay tuned…
* It’s a different world out there
* Thankful for the bad as well as the good

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Reliable information technology (IT) infrastructure and support for Bible translation teams serving in Africa are essential.  A new annual training conference, called IT Connect, seeks to improve and expand the knowledge of IT staff in our organization.  The first one in Nairobi began last week and will continue until June 18.  Students have come from several eastern African nations: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.  Jeff is participating in today’s session on remote IT support.

With advancements in available technology, remote IT support is becoming a viable option for many teams serving in Africa.  While it doesn’t entirely replace local IT support, remote staff can address a variety of IT problems using tools like instant messaging, VoIP, virtual private networks (VPN), and remote access software like Bomgar.

All too often thin IT teams struggle to keep up with demands in their locations. Sometimes only one IT tech is responsible for maintaining up to 30 people’s computers; other times a team may have no locally available IT support.  Remote staff can help.

Jeff will soon be moving into a role as a remote IT support specialist for Africa.  While he’ll stay focused on Africa, he’ll be joining a small and growing team that will provide remote IT support services to staff in four or five time zones that cover both Europe and Africa.  In his new position Jeff will be able to serve teams and offices based all around the continent of Africa, instead of just serving one administrative office.

This is a new initiative of Wycliffe International, so Jeff will be the first of what is hoped to be several remote IT staff based in Africa.  He hasn’t moved into this position yet, but an initial request for his assistance has already come in from some staff in Nigeria.  Their IT tech will be leaving Nigeria soon for a while, and Jeff could provide them with service remotely to keep their computers running until their IT tech returns.

His new role also comes with opportunities to travel a couple of times a year out to teams that need more significant help.  By providing on-site support for a specified period of time, he’ll be able to assist teams with special projects, events that require additional IT support and/or just help them catch up on regular work that has backed up.

We’re planning to coordinate his trips with mine so that we can do some traveling together.  At the end of the week we’ll be traveling together to Europe so that Jeff can meet his new team, and I can talk to the Europe staff about communications in Africa.

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Information technology continues to change the way we work.  Email began a revolution that now includes instant messaging, VoIP, virtual private networks (VPN), remote access software like Bomgar, and more.  Tools like these make it possible for people to be involved in some work and some roles remotely.  Their physical presence is not required because their virtual presence is enough.

Skype is an application that allows anyone to do free voice calls, video calls and instant messages over the internet.  It is one tool that is facilitating Bible translation.  It is being used in multiple ways by staff in a variety of positions in our organization. Translation teams are using it to get access to experienced translators (called translation consultants) who check their translations for accuracy.

Read about one instance of this happening in Tanzania below.

Remotely Viable
by David Brewerton

The Mara Cluster Project conducted a Bible translation consultant check of the Gospel of Luke in mid-January, chapter 22 in the Simbiti language. Nothing unusual, right? Well, not really. The consultant was in Holland and the translation team in a small town in Tanzania.

Not only was this event a success, it brought insight to the consultant checking process. Remote consulting is now a viable method of conducting consultant checks in the Mara Cluster.

The cluster project is currently working simultaneously with nine different but related Bantu languages. The project started in November 2008 and published its first scripture portions (the Christmas story in Luke) in December 2009 in all nine languages.

Dave is the translation adviser for Simbiti and Patrick the consultant. They spoke a few months earlier about ways to address the challenge of having a consultant who was not based in Musoma and ways to bring Patrick closer to Mara without extended and expensive travel. A remote consultant check was part of the answer to that problem. Since then we have been planning, testing, setting up and getting the translation ready.

Dave designed a technical setup that would solve the translation problems and process under the requirements stipulated by Patrick. This was not the first time that they had worked together. Patrick had worked with the team in Musoma for a year. The rapport established in prior meetings was one of the factors that contributed to the success of this event.

There are two very basic requirements for any consultant check. First, the consultant needs to see the text, understand it, and pass comment on places where it could be improved. Second, the translation team needs to clearly understand this feedback and make appropriate changes to the text and in turn have these evaluated. There may be multiple iterations of this process. The entire technical setup enabled this process.

All this meant that Patrick needed to see the text as it was edited by the translators immediately after those edits occurred and update his consultant notes or ask further questions as he saw fit.

Technically speaking

The whole team–translators, adviser in Tanzania and consultant in The Netherlands–had access to the Simbiti language database. This was done locally through a local area network (LAN) and remotely–for Patrick–through a virtual private network (VPN). The two locations each used Skype (www.skype.com) to speak to each other over the internet using speakers and noise canceling microphones.

In Holland, Patrick used his laptop coupled with an external monitor. The monitor showed his translation programs (Translators Workplace and Paratext 7) and Skype. The laptop screen showed the remote desktop session (via VPN) with Translation Editor and Translation Editor Notes. Patrick could see the text as it was edited by the translators immediately after those edits occurred and update his consultant notes or ask further questions as he saw fit.

The Tanzania team also used a projector to enable Dave to monitor the edits on the translators’ screen (this was optional). They also used a screen at the end of the consultant check to enable Patrick to greet the translators via video Skype. This brought great benefits of rapport, and in future sessions they will start with a brief video Skype to assist orientation.

They began each day with prayer at 11.00am Tanzania time, which is 9:00am in Holland. Dave and the translators, Waynse and Mago, were in a closed and relatively private office in Musoma, and Patrick was at his workstation in Holland. The time difference meant that the Tanzania team had a chance to respond to, process, and compose feedback on any issues of the day before or to process other feedback and move these issues out of the time that Patrick was online.

The internet connection was sufficient to enable excellent transmission of voice and never during the consultant check did they have hearing issues related to poor transmission. The connection dropped twice in five and a half hours. In both cases it was re-established without significant delay (the Skype connection used around 35 mb/hour).

Patrick’s setup of dual monitors was a great asset both in his examination of the text prior to the check and while in the check itself.

The team was able to check all of Luke 22 in about five and a half hours. (Note: A do not disturb sign on the door is essential in Tanzania). When they earlier contemplated what result they might report, they did not expect that the most significant change required was a new three way microphone splitter. This experiment shows that this method of consultant checking is viable, and it may bring significant benefits to the Mara Cluster Project.

This story originally appeared on http://www.thetask.net/mara/remotely-viable

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In January our office moved into a new building.  It’s the same campus, and within view of where we were.  While I was traveling in Cameroon and Chad, the IT team that Jeff is part of played a significant role getting all the technology set up in the building—setting up phones, the internet network, getting new servers up and running….  It was a big job.  Everyone is now mostly settled into their new office spaces.

This leads me to an update on what Jeff has been doing.

Jeff works on a team of three IT support specialists that serves several organizations that all work on this campus—all now in the same building:
•    Bible Translation and Literacy (BTL, Kenya): This is a Kenyan organization that is part of Wycliffe International.  Their organization oversees all the Bible translation and related language work done by our organization in Kenya, and they also promote Bible translation and related language work in churches and to other like-minded organizations.
•    SIL’s Africa Area: This team provides administrative support to the SIL teams serving in about 20 countries in Africa.  These teams provide linguistic and translation services to language communities in the countries where they work.
•    SIL’s Eastern Congo team:  This team provides linguistic and translation services to language communities in eastern DR Congo.
•    Wycliffe International’s Africa Area:  This team provides administrative support to the eight Wycliffe organizations in Africa
•    Other assorted staff that live in Nairobi or come to Nairobi for organizational meetings.

Each day Jeff probably connects with about ten people with computer related questions, and services an average of at least three computers.  Computers are essential to getting work done, and the team helps with any number of computer related issues:
•    connecting staff with network drives and printers
•    cleaning computers of viruses and malware
•    setting up and servicing email accounts
•    installing software
•    repairing and replacing broken hardware
•    setting up and maintaining wired and wireless internet networks

This team supports the computers of administrators that provide oversight in some way to more than one-thousand other staff working across Africa which are connecting with hundreds language communities on the continent.  If that sounds like an important role–that’s because it is!  More IT specialists are needed all over the world.

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Photo contributed by Kent Schoeder

NAIROBI, KENYA—Eight language software trainees and consultants from various parts of Africa came to Kenya October 12-30, 2009 to participate in SIL* Africa area’s first Language Software Consultant Training Course taught in English.  The course was led by Kent Schroeder, language software consultant, and Doug Higby, language software coordinator.  It is being planned as an annual event.  Higby has previously taught the course in French to colleagues from French-speaking countries.

In Africa, linguistic computer consultants are few, communications resources are sometimes limited and staff are spread across large geographical distances, sometimes in remote areas.  This course brought consultants and trainees to one place to get the information they needed, so that they can then train linguist, literacy and translation staff in their regions. Participants received training in using and supporting a collection of software programs available to translation, literacy and linguist staff, and discussed strategies for how to most effectively use each program.  Some programs have been upgraded, so participants received the information they needed to smoothly transition themselves and others to newer software tools.  Every participant left the course with an eight-gigabyte flashdrive with all of the language software they need to install and troubleshoot.   They can refresh their knowledge by reviewing regularly updated course materials on-line.

“The consultant training program is not just about the workshop. These eight people have all committed themselves to a consultant development path and our goal is to help them excel in language technology. The course instructors are available to the students at any moment via email, Skype, and user groups,” said Higby.

Linguistic computing is a critical component of translation and language development projects.   Software programs help linguists and Bible translators store, sort, compare, and analyze data and then prepare it for publication.  This helps linguists focus their efforts on less tedious and repetitive tasks, and it can take years off of the total time of a Bible translation program.  SIL’s linguistic computing staff have developed more than 60 pieces of linguistics related software, and they continue to develop more.

In Wycliffe linguistic computing is part of the information technology domain.  Wycliffe needs more individuals with IT skills to serve in open positions available around the world.   See what kinds of jobs are available.

*SIL International is an affiliate organization of Wycliffe.

Read more about this course.

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Repost from David’s blog, The Translation Beat
All text and photos in this post by David

Last week, I visited a discourse analysis workshop with my friend Jeff Pubols. Jeff works in computer support here in Nairobi, and he was visiting the workshop to perform some basic repair and cleanup on laptops used by Kenyan translation teams.

People with skills like Jeff’s are essential to keep equipment operating so that translators can keep working smoothly and efficiently.

Meanwhile, I was watching linguists working with various translation teams, helping them analyze various features of their language and of the biblical texts that they were translating. (Discourse analysis is concerned with how language works above the sentence level.) It really does take all kinds!

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