Letting go the familiar words and holding onto the real meaning
[This was first drafted in July – well before the C of E cinema ad controversy blew up. Still, perhaps it may inform a little and provoke some more worthy thought.] Our Father who is in heaven… What’s the first request of the Lord’s prayer? Can you express it in everyday language that you might genuinely use …
How one slash slashes your website: WordPress .htaccess file preventing access to password-protected directories
Very helpful article from hostgator here http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/technical/wordpress/wordpress-preventing-you-from-password-protecting-a-directory shows up a problem which can drive many people crazy if they’ve got WordPress installed at root alongside other CGI password-protected folders. In short, there’s a missing / here: RewriteRule . /index.php [L] which would be better being RewriteRule ./ /index.php [L]
Threatening Rainbow
Never before had a rainbow seemed so threatening. It was on the walk to school this morning. With the clouds rushing towards the low winter morning sun overhead, I looked West and saw a rainbow. Actually it was my daughters who spotted it first and they love a good rainbow. But where they saw pots …
Grace is…
Grace is one of those words that most Christian kids or young Christians end up being taught is special and has a special meaning. That’s great, but in my role as a Bible translator I’m starting to get a little concerned about words like that. OK, we all know that grace is… (fill in the …
Lessons from Software Engineering for Bible Translation
Some time I may get round to writing a paper on some cross-disciplinary lessons that Bible translators can learn from Software Engineering. (This is essentially trying to integrate my former and current career paths.) My attention was caught by a slightly overblown headline on favourite irreverent geeky news site The Register: Most developers have never seen a …
Newsletter: Travels and Finance
Download Newsletter as PDF (1MB) October was a month of travel for the Rowbory family, with all of us zooming round England to visit friends and family during the mid-term break before David flew off to America to attend and present a paper at a Bible translation conference. We’ve also been arranging meetings and speaking …
Word for word
Here’s a half-formed thought for translation people. It probably gradually dawns on us all that the way the English Bible normally uses ‘word’ is not the usual way that we use it in English. It’s generally used as a translation for λογος or ρημα or אֹמֶר or דָּבָר. The problem is that the most common …
Video: An update on our work and life in Nigeria
Rowborys in Nigeria from benandren on Vimeo. This version is complete with a ‘blooper reel’ at the end featuring… well, watch it and see!
The problem with problem solving
Problem solving is at the heart of what drives programmers and many other folk to make things better. The problem is, there may be quite a variety of ways to solve a problem, some of which end up storing up bigger trouble ahead. And VW seems to have fallen into that trap. I would love to …
A flood of migrants – desperate to get away, determined to survive
Happened across an interesting article which came my way, talking about some migrants: He was quite taken with the story of S_____ travelling to _____ on boats like the ____ and the horrendous conditions they experienced during those voyages. “It shows how desperate they were to get out of S____. They were sold on the idea of hope …