Be an Encourager

During the last ParaTExt workshop, Ma Sciphra Nde from Ngwo was very scared of the computer. I made a joke that she is looking at her computer and the computer is looking at her. I challenged/encouraged her to try using it. I told her that she can make it. On the day the workshop ended, she walked up to me and congratulated me for being a good teacher. She promised me that when next she comes to the office, she will have been typing. Today she walked into my office with a problem. I was happy to see her holding the laptop. I solved her problem and she was very happy. I was very happy too especially as she told me that because of my encouragement, she can now type. She told me that she is learning a lot. She made my day.

ParaTExt 8.0 plus consistency checks workshop, July 2017

The Regional Translation Coordinator Pastor Joseph Nkwelle invited me to train 2 teams to do basic ParaTExt on their text and prepare the Gospels of Mark and Luke for publication. Even before now, there has been a need of such a training for several other teams in the region two of which are nearing the typesetting of the NT. Instead of visiting and working with each time individually, I decided to organize a workshop at the Bamenda Regional Training Center (BRTC) to bring all the teams together for this workshop. I also arranged for a typesetting staff to be present so that we can teach this course together and he learns more about ParaTExt 8. Also this was a good moment to introduce the teams to begin using ParaTExt 8.0. This way, they can begin to use the new features in version 8 to check their text especially to do consistency checking on their text.
23 people were present for this training that lasted for 4 full days.
Participants expressed that they had learned a lot and will be putting this to use.
This workshop was mostly hands on with the projects using their own data to work on things. This was particularly important as they are preparing to publish two gospels.
It was an opportunity to continue mentoring Eliot. I was particularly happy to see one lady I had been working very closely with from the Bakweri project in Buea step up and help others. This gives me joy to see those I have trained put the lessons to use and even help others.

the CABTAL website is up and running!

After several months of very hard work by different people. 8th August 2017 at exactly noon, the cabtal website went operational. We are very grateful for Kalaam Media who is our host. We are very grateful to the team that worked so hard to get things to this level. Our website is still work in progress but visit it and have fun. Also leave us your feedback for reform.

Our roads! our roads!! our roads!!!

After a very tiring day in the office and trying to head back home to your family, sometimes you begin to wonder what next as you begin to see strange signs on the road. Even going to work sometimes you are not sure that your car will make it before the industry close to our office that deals with logs for electric poles always does wonders. If their huge trucks have not blocked the roads, they will have made it impassable. One day they had two trucks on the road so the entire road was completely blocked. I stood there for a while and no one even recognised my presence. I had no choice than to look for the back road. In is interesting how the truck drivers always consider themselves as the "kings" on the high way. Well we have to give way to the big vehicles else they crush us. Sometimes we have to pack our vehicles in the neighborhood and head to the office trusting them in the Lord's care and protection. Our Lord never fails us, he keeps watch all the time. The good news is that on the flip side, the road through our neighborhood is being worked on, for which we are so thankful to the Lord.

Special outfits made with love

When I was in Thailand in 2016, I came across this particular fabric and thought it was very nice. So I immediately got a piece. I knew very well that Lilian can work on it and produce something very beautiful. This weekend, she was very busy and look at what she produced for both of us! Now Caritas has not been to school this academic year because of the political situation. However, she has been spending her time learning how to design and sew and look what she is able to make. She can even make her own clothes now. I admire my wife and daughter for this special talent that they have to design and make outfits.I consider these as made very specially and with love too.

ParaTExt 8

I have setup ParaTExt 8 on about 25 laptops for 11 language projects. One remarkable thing is that I not had any difficulty at all in running the setup. One particular computer will not accept 7.5 but ParaTExt 8 installed smoothly. So these teams have all migrated to ParaTExt 8 and have had some training to use it and are using ParaTExt 8.0 successfully except for the slowness issue which has just been addressed by that updated. At least I downloaded the update and tried in my computer and it running well now.

Recently, I was working with one of the projects as we process their text as they prepare to go for typesetting. They are really taking advantage of the new features in ParaTExt 8 especially those that help in running basic checks, Wordlists, Key terms and Parallel passage checks. One of the translator (Christian Alomofor point on the screen) is also an exegete for other languages in the cluster. He is very happy to learn various tools in ParaTExt and sees how this prunes their work and now wants to encourage the teams he works with to begin using the checks and don't wait to introduce the checks at the very end. This is what I have been promoting and pushing over the years because when I train translators my expectation is that exegetes/consultants should enforce the use of various ParaTExt tools since they are in contact more often.

Got more work done today!

Today I had my daughter (Pamela) come along to help me in the office with my work. At first she didn't know she could help help me in anything but I had some evaluations that she could read and put together a summary for me. This is the kind of work that she is trained to do so that worked well. It was really good to have someone to work and talk with. It was a very busy day though with lots of interruptions from people needing different things. Besides the office Internet was not working and I was trying to fix it. We had lots of fun too. Too bad she is leaving tomorrow.