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Author Archives: david
Glossy: Quickly look up Paratext Lexicons
Last year a fellow consultant asked the best way to use the store of glosses created by Paratext’s Interlinearizer feature. This is my answer: glossy. Not a real dictionary, but a helpful alternative view. Feedback welcome.
Posted in Bible Translation
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Quick WeSay Training Videos
Five videos giving the essentials of using WeSay (for preparatory word collection in Nigeria).
Posted in News
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Idioms, Idiosyncrisy & Idiocy
It never ceases to amuse and intrigue me how figurative language and idioms vary wildly and dangerously between languages. I say dangerously because the unwary can be very easily deceived by the ‘literal’ or ‘word for word’ meaning. Apparently in … Continue reading
Posted in Bible Translation
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Proud to be (partially) Ugandan
OK, I’m not Ugandan in any political sense – and probably to be honest only sentimentally – but still it’s one of the countries I’m probably proudest of. I came across this which fanned those flames again: In the minds … Continue reading
Posted in World Mission
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Complex Identity
I think it’s fair to generalise that Nigerians are much more likely to strike up conversation than British people and are into somewhat robust jocularity. Rebekah unfortunately doesn’t always quite understand that some rather direct an ludicrous request (such as “Will … Continue reading
Posted in Family
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Jos church attack
Many of you will have heard about the attack on a church in Jos early yesterday morning. We and all friends are completely fine. We had good advice from our leadership in the group from soon after the attack and … Continue reading
Posted in News
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WeSay hacks: New kinds of tasks
There are some tasks that the WeSay Configuration Tool doesn’t let you configure directly. But you can write your own quite easily (as someone else has discovered) since the XML configuration file format has quite a lot of scope for … Continue reading
Why Dictionaries Matter in Bible Translation
Here’s a disclaimer: I first came to Nigeria in 2001 on a short term trip to help people finish off a dictionary as part of a Bible translation project. I thought that might be the last of my dictionary-making, but … Continue reading
WeSay: Dictionary-Making For New Linguists
There is a fantastic program called WeSay for facilitating dictionary development. It’s particularly aimed at helping people gather and describe words in their own language even without strong computer experience or traditional linguistic training. It doesn’t replace analysis tools like … Continue reading
Meaningless! Meaningless! Literal is Meaningless!
Executive summary: ‘Literal’ is a darling word for many, attractive because it suggests straightforward, direct and reliable communication. However, the fact is that it gets used to mean quite a few different things by different people and if subjected to … Continue reading
Posted in Language
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