Ngiembɔɔn Translation Technology training

This week, our team (Etienne, Eliot, Pa Moise and I) is in Batcham near Mbouda training the Ngiembɔɔn translators to harness technology to expedite their work on translating their Old Testament Bible. It is encouraging to see men and women working very hard too. They come from far and near everyday mostly on motorbikes. It should be noted that the roads are very slippery these days so it is very common to hear that someone fell off the bike on their way to the project office. Thankfully, they always get up and continue without any major injuries. We begin each day with someone reading a portion from their New Testament and giving an exhortation all in their language! Thank you for supporting Bible Translation and language development work.

Paratext workshop this week in Buea

It gets very scary on the Yaounde - Douala highway especially when everyone wants to get there very fast. With this scene, you cannot forget to thank God for helping you to arrive safely in your final destination. This week was very encouraging to see and hear from translators and CITs working with the Sawa languages. Their computer use skills are greatly improving making them enjoy the task of Bible translation that they have committed their lives to.

Eastern Bantu Paratext training

These brothers were so excited to learn how to use computers and especially to type the Scriptures they had earlier drafted in their computers using Paratext software. One night I gave them an assignment to practice typing some drafts in the gospel of Luke and the following morning, they showed me how they had made progress and typed several verses. It was encouraging to see their enthusiasm and progress. To learn or teach how to use computers in an adult class requires a fair amount of patience from both the learner and trainer. It has lots of fun too.

theBARAHs Business Center

TheBarahs have setup a shop in Yaounde. The sewing shop and Mobile Money Shop is at Monte Mvan opposite Amy Coifure.
You are most welcome to stop by and have Lilian measure your outfits or do your Mobile Money transactions.

CABTAL's new General Director

For the past several months, the board of CABTAL has been working in the background looking for a leader for CABTAL for the next four years. At the end of March that person was made know and on the 5th of April he was officially put to task. Please pray for Emmanuel Keyeh as he takes on the top leadership at CABTAL. Pray that God will give him wisdom and understand to take CABTAL from where it is now to the next level.

LTCT 2019 Kenya

It was a blessing to have Language Technology workers from Anglo-Lusophone Africa come to Nairobi Kenya for another training event. It has been 8 serious days of training, team teaching, problem solving and looking at the growth plans of every participant to see what progress they have made in the past year. It was also a moment to work with software developers.
This year our principal focus was on ParaTExt 9 which is still in beta, it might be released in May. We also worked more on Bloom, Regular Expressions, Reading App Builder, Dictionary App Builder, Premer Pro etc.
Getting to Nairobi was quite a concern for us and for many, it is truly a big thank you to God for protecting them from the plane crash from Ethiopia to Nairobi.
As we leave here and head back, there is a lot that we need to continue to do to promote, advocate, consult and support language technology so that the work of Bible Translation and Language development may speed up in the different areas that we serve.

Digital Literacy Workshop

February 26, 27, and 28, I was invited to Bamenda to teach how to use Bloom and Reading App Builder. It was an excited time with the literacy specialists and consultant as they are focusing on making more and more digital literacy materials. This is going to advance their literacy work in the Anglophone region as more and more people are getting displaced. This is also going to make literacy and Bible Translation work faster as people from different communities who live in the diaspora can easily engage with reading and writing in their mother language.