There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
One of my passions as a missionary is equipping the global church to reach the world with God’s Word. A big shift in Bible Translation has been the increasing number of Nationals and churches translating the Bible into their own language, or for a people group near them. This shift has created an incredible opportunity as we develop software for Bible translation.
Paul’s encouragement to the church in Galatia reminds us that we are all one in Christ as we strive to bring God’s Word to every language, tribe and people. We want to ensure we provide free software that will be easy to use for all translators and organizations. How can we make Paratext simpler for users who have never used a computer before? How do we best localize our software into different languages so people who do not know English can use it easily? If I needed help while translating what would I do? A lot of our work over the past year and in the future is driven by these types of questions.
In Paratext, users can change the language (menu bars, titles, messages, etc) to the 14 most popular languages in the world and Paratext will adjust to help users who are not fluent in English. However, we currently have a large library of help information that is written mostly in English and currently does not adjust to another language. We are beginning a new initiative to make getting help a lot easier for non English speakers, as we put the help information into more languages. Out of all the work our team has done this year, I am most excited to see our help information localized into different languages!
Last year I was searching the internet to learn how to use some computer software code for a project I was on. After an hour of unsuccessful searching I found the exact article I needed; however, it was frustrating because the title of the article was in English and the rest of the article was in German. Thankfully we were able to solve the problem we were having, but for a time I was stuck. I knew the answers to my problem were right there, just out of reach. God used that little moment to show me how important it is to have help in a language that all of our users on every continent can understand. We have over 850 help topics and articles that are out of reach for some people, but soon will be available in a language they understand.