November 2016

TBTA’s First Fruit

Tod Allman and Ephraim Rey have been developing a Tagalog lexicon and grammar for approximately two years now.  They began by working through the book of Ruth, then Esther, five chapters of Luke, the first half of Daniel, and they hope to finish Genesis by the end of this year.  Ephraim edited the computer generated draft of Ruth in order to make it publishable, and then they put the text into the pictures provided by Free Illustrated Bible.  Several of you recently made generous donations so that we could print 500 copies of our Tagalog translation of Ruth.  We received those books this week, and we’re excited to begin distributing them at orphanages, special schools, churches, and prisons.  We know that Ruth is a small book and will probably not lead anyone to Christ directly, but this is just the beginning.  Please pray that God will use these books to reach the young people in Manila, and that we’ll be able to produce many more books of the Bible in Tagalog and the other languages spoken in the Philippines.

Tod Allman and Ephraim Rey with 500 Copies of Ruth

Would you please consider making a donation to help cover the costs of printing the other picture Bible books for the students and young people in the Philippines.  It costs approximately $2 for each copy of Esther, and $2 for the first half of Daniel.  All of these books will be printed in color and bound. We also hope to be printing all of Genesis and the first five chapters of Luke by early next year.  If you’d like to make a donation, you can click the Donation button below, and please include a note indicating which books you would like to have printed, and which ministry you’d like to receive the books.  We appreciate your generosity.  All donations are tax deductible. 

Translating Bible stories:
There are certain situations in which it is either impossible or impractical to translate large portions of the Bible.  In those situations, missionaries may try to translate a series of simple Bible stories.  Some missionaries even recommend starting with Bible stories as a preliminary to translating the Bible in order to gauge the people’s response. We at TBTA want to assist missionaries who are translating Bible stories, so Richard Denton has begun preparing semantic representations for “A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories,” by Arthur Gross. These stories are extremely easy for us to translate into our software’s semantic representational system because the vocabulary and sentence structures of these stores are very simple. There are 60 stories in the book, and we have completed our first stage of semantic analysis for 7 of them. So our software will soon be able to quickly translate these stories into other languages, just like it translates the Biblical books.

The Lord’s Prayer in Chinese: Jeremiah Chung and Tod Allman worked together to develop a partial lexicon and grammar for Chinese sufficient to generate the Luke version of the Lord’s Prayer.  For those of you who can read Chinese, the results are shown below.

Luke 11:2 耶稣 說, “当 你们 祷告, 要 說, “父亲, 你 的 名 是 圣的. 愿 你 的 国 降临 这 地上.

Luke 11:3 每一 日 请 賜 咱们 需要 的 食物.

Luke 11:4 请 饶恕 咱们 如同 咱们 饶恕 那些 对待 咱们 不好 的 人. 请 不要 让 咱们 被 试探.””

The same prayer generated by our software in English is as follows:

Luke 11:2 Jesus said, “When you pray, say, “Father, your name is holy. We want your kingdom to come here.

Luke 11:3 Each day give us the food that we need.  

Luke 11:4 Forgive us like we forgive those people who treat us badly. And don’t allow us to be tempted.””

Year End Donations:
As the end of 2016 approaches, would you please consider making a tax deductible donation to The Bible Translator’s Assistant.  All donations are greatly appreciated and go directly to the ministry of computer assisted Bible translation.

Amazon Smile:
As you shop for the holidays online, one way to donate to TBTA is through Amazon Smile.  TBTA is registered with Amazon Smile, so Amazon will donate .5% of all your online purchases to TBTA.  To shop through Amazon Smile, please go to the donations page of our website, and click the “Get Started” button in the Amazon Smile section. If you search for us in Amazon Smile, you should search for “The Bible Translators Assistant” (no apostrophe in “Translator’s”).Thank you from all of us at TBTA, and we hope you have a great holiday season.

Additional Praise and Prayer Requests:
1) Please pray for Stephen Beale as he continues to prepare for a workshop in Vanuatu in early 2018.  He’s hoping to gather the necessary linguistic data in order to produce initial draft translations of several Old Testament books in five languages spoken on Tanna Island.
2) Please pray for Richard Denton as he continues to develop semantic representations for several Old Testament books and the Bible stories.  The semantic representations are the foundation of this project, and are crucial for producing accurate translations in a wide variety of languages.
3) Please pray for Tod Allman as he continues to work in both Tagalog and Ayta Mag-Indi.  We hope to put the Ayta Mag-Indi translations into the same picture books as the Tagalog translations.
4) Please pray for Jeremiah Chung as he prepares to run another half marathon.  He’s donating the proceeds from this half marathon to Stephen Beale’s upcoming Vanuatu workshop.  If you’d like to donate, please click the button below.  Please also pray for Jeremiah as he continues networking with other Christians who are interested in using their technical skills for ministry. 

“The war for souls, minds and lives rages.
Many people who have virtually no access to God’s Truth fall victim to
Satan’s lies because they don’t understand the Bible.
Through partnering in Bible translation, you can put Swords at their fingertips.”
Julie Andersen
Wycliffe Bible Translators