News – All The Word

The Source Text for the Gospel of Matthew has been completed

August 2022

Richard Denton, David Duncan, and four members of Wycliffe-Canada recently completed the source text for Matthew. It took approximately 1,500 hours, but now our software can translate Matthew into any language that we’ve developed a lexicon and grammar for.

The source text has been consultant checked for accuracy, conveys all of the message, includes implicit information, and has footnotes and cross-references. Two unedited English drafts of Matthew produced by our software can be seen below

The implicit information is always marked with brackets (‘<‘ and ‘>’) so that readers know it’s not part of the inspired text

The first version doesn’t contain any implicit information; that version most closely resembles the translations of Matthew that all of us are accustomed to reading. The second version contains implicit information to help people who have never read the Bible before so that they can easily understand the message.

If we had a source text for every book in the Bible, our software would be able to quickly translate the entire Bible into many different languages. Please pray for the people who are building these source texts. They’re now working on John, Colossians, and Proverbs.

TBTA Unedited English draft of Matthew without implicit information

TBTA Unedited English draft of Matthew with implicit information

The Gospel of Mark has been translated into a language spoken in Asia

May, 2022

Late last year a team of translators finished building the source text for the book of Mark. Tod has been working with a translator in Asia for a couple of years now, and they’ve been building a lexicon and grammar for a language spoken in Asia.

After the source text for Mark was completed, Tod and the local translator produced a draft of Mark in that language, and that draft is now being edited for naturalness and clarity. The edited draft will go through the customary team check, community check, and consultant check.

The local Bible translator working in this language says that it’s extremely difficult to find mother-tongue speakers who will help him translate the Bible because the speakers of that language are hostile to the Bible.

it’s extremely difficult to find mother-tongue speakers who will help him translate the Bible because the speakers of that language are hostile to the Bible

Over 99 percent of them follow a faith other than Christianity. But he said that a few mother-tongue speakers are willing help him edit TBTA’s drafts because editing is faster and easier than producing new translation drafts. So he’s very appreciative of All the Word’s help with this very challenging translation project. He recommends TBTA for any translators working with a people group that is hostile to the Bible.

If you would like to pray for him, his local translation team, the checking and testing process, or even All the Word and their involvement, please consider subscribing to their daily prayer program at pray4thebanjar.com. You can easily unsubscribe at any time.

Craig Palmer begins building a Lexicon and Grammar for Gichuka

January, 2022.

Craig has started developing a lexicon and grammar for Gichuka, a Bantu language spoken in central Kenya. He meets online regularly with a Gichuka speaker named Anthony Muthomi, who is a member of BTLKenya (btlkenya.org). Gichuka is a fairly agglutinative language, with lots of morphology on the verb for tense, aspect, and valency-adjustment. It also has the classic noun classes of Bantu languages, which affects agreement on adjectives, verbs, and even prepositions.

Two simple sentences in English and Gichuka are shown below so that you can see what an agglutinative language is like. In an agglutinative language, ideas that are separate words in English are often prefixes or suffixes that attach to the verb. In the second sentence below, English uses five words, but the Gichuka sentence has only one word.

John saw a chair. Then he sat on it.
Njũana nĩonire gĩtĩ. Akĩnagĩkarĩra.

John saw a chair.
Njũana nĩ-(a)-on-ire gĩtĩ.
John past-3SG-see-perfective chair.SG.

Then he sat on it.
A-kĩna-g-ĩkar-ĩra.
3SG-then-it-sit-applicative

Gichuka is a fairly agglutinative language, with lots of morphology on the verb for tense, aspect, and valency-adjustment.

All of these prefixes and suffixes are based on rules, so Craig is writing rules to make TBTA produce accurate and high quality translations in this agglutinative language.

The Source Text for the Gospel of Mark has been Completed

Richard Denton, David Duncan, and four members of Wycliffe-Canada have been working together to prepare the source text for Mark. It took approximately 800 hours, but the source text is now complete, and it turned out fantastic.

The source text is accurate, conveys all of the message, includes an abundance of implicit information, has numerous footnotes, and even includes cross-references. Using that source text, our software is now able to produce drafts of Mark in any language for which we’ve developed a lexicon and grammar.

Two unedited English drafts of Mark produced by our software can be seen below. The first version doesn’t contain any implicit information; that version most closely resembles the translations of Mark that all of us are accustomed to reading. The second version contains implicit information to help people who have never read the Bible before so that they can easily understand the message.

The implicit information is always marked with brackets (‘<‘ and ‘>’) so that readers know it’s not part of the inspired text. The second version also includes alternative analyses, footnotes, and cross-references. If we had a source text for every book in the Bible, our software would be able to quickly translate the entire Bible into many different languages.

Please pray for the people who are building these source texts. They’re now finishing Matthew, and working on John, Colossians, and Proverbs.

TBTA Unedited English draft of Mark without implicit information

TBTA Unedited English draft of Mark with implicit information