An Accelerator for Bible Translation
The send/receive function in Paratext—the main Bible translation software—stopped working for Maya,* a translator, for several months.
![](https://www.jaars.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Some_IT_staff_available_for_help_with_Paratext_8.jpg)
This Paratext feature is important because it stores a translation project’s information in a central location. If multiple people in the project work out of different locations, they can do a send/receive and easily obtain the latest update in the translation project.
“Once we fixed it,” Jack relates, “the joy in Maya’s face was immense.”
Without this feature, Maya’s team had to copy their work onto a flash drive, then laboriously copy the work from the drive—one-by-one onto each of their computers. Since her team members don’t live close together, it took days to acquire the latest version of the Scripture, and sometimes version-related issues cropped up.
Recently, Maya attended an Advanced IT (Information Technology) training at the Wycliffe Center in South Asia. Their IT department, like an accelerator in a car, helps projects like Maya’s speed up and continue without screeching to a halt. “IT plays a significant role in the Bible translation work,” Jack*, the CEO of Wycliffe in South Asia, says. “Our [IT] team works with translation teams on a day-to-day basis supporting them to use various features of the software.”
The IT personnel at Maya’s training tried several options to fix Maya’s send/receive function and determined an antivirus security setting was blocking this function. “Once we fixed it,” Jack relates, “the joy in Maya’s face was immense.”
Because of your generous investment in JAARS Technology Solutions, Maya and other translators in South Asia can receive the help they need to continue shaping God’s love story into the language their people understand best.
*Names have been changed for security purposes.