Postscript

Jeff’s in Nairobi, Kenya this week for an event called IT Connect.  Computer support staff who support Bible translation and administration teams for several African countries are participating.

This picture above shows the group listening to a presentation on maintaining the specialized translation and linguistic software used by staff in translation and literacy programs.  Some of the programs have been updated.

Sufficient IT staff remains one of the top three personnel needs of Wycliffe.  More IT staff are needed to serve Bible translation and administrative staff in Africa and around the world.   Learn more about current IT needs.

In the midst of getting set up for our lives in South Africa, both of us have been busy assisting Wycliffe staff that live in this area.  I’ve been providing consulting help to Wycliffe South Africa on their branding strategy, while Jeff has been helping with computer repairs.

In the last week or so Jeff has worked on three computers in person and completed one remote repair.  Today, he is making a house call at two colleagues’ home office helping them sort out some issues with their email and another software program.  Next week he’ll be doing some long-over-due updates on another colleague’s computer.  The team here seems glad to be getting some assistance from Jeff.

Wycliffe staff based in South Africa serve in a variety of roles from raising awareness of Bible translation and opportunities for involvement, to administrating donated funds, to having direct involvement in Bible translation projects located in other southern African countries.  While Jeff will serve many different offices in Africa, he will be a main source of IT support for this team.

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

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.

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!