Southeast Asia (MNN) — A church planting network in Southeast Asia is hosting a global hackathon for Bible translation this week.
“There’ll be groups in Asia, Eurasia, Middle East, Latin America, all getting online and working on projects together to solve Bible translation needs,” unfoldingWord’s David Reeves says.
“Hackathons allow these various network operators to work together, focus on a project [that will solve] one problem, and then get something done.”
You may be familiar with hackathons from the tech world. Programmers and software designers create a solution to an existing problem using technology. The concept is similar here.
(Photo courtesy of Arif Ryanto/Unsplash)
Church-centric Bible translators in the unfoldingWord network use open-source, or shared, technology to translate Scripture into minority languages. As with any line of work, problems come up.
For example, “Bible maps provide great, useful information when you’re trying to understand Paul’s missionary journey or something like that,” Reeves says.
“What will you do when your only one is a JPEG image [in] English, and you want it in some minority language? How are you going to fix that?”
Last year’s hackathon provided an answer. “Some guys from the Eurasia network came up with a clever way to change the text on their maps to local languages,” Reeves says.
Pray for wisdom as Bible translators identify their top needs this week and work together on a solution. If you want to use your tech skills for God, connect with unfoldingWord here.
Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Shamin Haky/Unsplash.
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