Quickly building (Keyman) Predictive Text keyboards
The excellent Keyboard App Builder helps you build keyboards for Android devices, wrapping the very clever Keyman Android Engine. I’ve been working on a keyboard for the Nigerian languages I know and one feature I’ve been experimenting with is predictive text, where the keyboard suggests what it thinks you may be saying so you can …
Naija Type – a keyboard for Nigeria
Can you type the ₦ Naira symbol correctly and easily? The Koro Ashɛ team and many others have asked me about the best way of typing their languages correctly on phones, I’ve been putting together an Android App and a KeyMan keyboard. It includes the ₦ symbol and all kinds of letters like ə ɛ …
Nigerian Bible Translation History – inspiring & painful
‘…the “Sword of the Spirit” [the Bible], placed in the hands of the congregations, in their own tongue, will do more… than all our preaching, teaching and meetings of so many years put together’ – Samuel Ajayi Crowther “Dr Samuel Ajayi Crowther was the first African bishop in the Anglican Church and the first African Bible …
Anathema
Why might someone call down curses on themselves? Fury with God or with self? Despair? What does it mean for someone to be blighted by witchcraft? Why would anyone ask for that? These questions pop up when looking at Romans chapter 9:3 in Nigerian languages, because while ‘cursing’ and ‘swearing’ are treated somewhat lightly or …
Best Practices for developing and using Best Practices?
Many organisations have a concern for developing and checking conformity to Best Practice. Bible translation is no exception. Often Best Practice comes about after people notice recurring failures or a variety of good and bad outcomes. It seems to be part of a Western-style obsession with not just coping but striving after excellence or trying …
Ashɛ Story 1: Tortoise and the Feast in the Sky
Listen to the story in Ishɛ language while you read along below
Making Luke Clear & Compelling
Meanwhile most of my time has been spent trying to work with translator Arams over patchy video links from his home in Kachia, revising Luke’s gospel. I’m pleased to report we are making decent progress and have managed to tidy up really quite a lot. Three weeks ago he travelled to our office in Jos …
Example of Discourse Improvements in Luke
We certainly haven’t got Luke’s gospel finished yet, but over the last few months Moses and Arams and then just Arams and I have been working through the whole of Luke’s gospel about 20 times or more looking at particular issues and tidying things up. I thought I’d give any interested people (geeks) an annotated …
Translator training: checking tools
The current translator(s) with the Ashɛ translation project had not received much training in using the translation software, so we’ve been doing that over Skype and I’ve made some videos to reinforce what we have done interactively. They’re unedited and not amazing, but if you want a taste of what we have been doing (but …
Biblish: According to…
One stock phrase that comes up quite often in many English Bible translations is according to. It’s bona fide English, but it contains within it a subtle trap which can be quite annoying or disconcerting for the reader and this is why. You’ll probably recognise 2 kinds of use of according to in everyday English: …