Hugh’s Role: Assistant to the Linguistics Coordinator & Assistant to the Access Coordinator
Hugh works with the Linguistics Coordinator and with the Access Coordinator to make language materials available to translators, researchers and language development workers. Currently there is a wealth of information that is simply inaccessible to those who need it. Hugh will help implement a system to make these materials available digitally, via the internet, affecting the mechanics of language development and translation projects throughout the Americas Area and around the world.
Why do we need to Archive?
Many people ask the question: “Why do we need to Archive?” Here are some very good reasons:
- For the communities
- For our fellow workers
- Partners in Ministry
- Other Linguists
Both professional linguists without a focus on Bible translation and partners in Bible translation need access to linguistic resources. This affects our standing in the eyes of our contemporaries and fellow laborers.
- For those who will carry the baton after us
The communities we serve need to have access to the materials we created about their language and culture.
Sometimes a translation spans more time than one translator has to offer. How do we pass on the knowledge a translator gains to the next “generation” of translators?
Passing the baton to those who come after us.
The efforts made to provide a translation and to add value to a community could be completely lost.
In 2004, this was the last known copy of the Gospel of Matthew in Waja. This Gospel of Matthew was also 1 of only 2 known printed documents in the language.
In 2008, Hugh was at a conference where he heard Chuck Grimes talking about a situation involving his dad, Joe Grimes. Joe Grimes was involved with translating the New Testament for the Huichol people in Mexico. After the New Testament had been used for several years, local pastors had identified several issues that needed to be addressed by revising the New Testament. However, there was the question: “Where are the typeset files, and the translation files?” Chuck pointed out that without proper archiving these pastors had to go through quite a bit of difficulty to find the files. When they got the files there was also no guarantee that they were going to work on the current computers. This is just one illustration how archiving affects Bible translation.
Another illustration of how accessibility to archived materials affects the training of Bible translators can be seen in the following dialog. A friend of Becky’s asked us to help him in this situation as he was trying to get some training materials for the courses he teaches.
01 October 2008
Dear [Sir],
I would like to get hold of several publications in the Language Data Africa Series for our Department library. Do you have a complete list of publications in this series, and in what formats they are available? I only have a list up to No.23. The numbers I was particularly interested in were: No’s 4,6,7,8,10,11,12,14,15,19. In the list in the back of No.23, it says that these numbers are available on microfiche only. Is that still the case? Hard copies would be best for us, but electronic versions would also be helpful.
Please let me know what is available and how much each option costs.
In Him,
Dr. [protecting the innocent]
The Reply:
11 December 2008
Dear [Sir],My sincere apology for not responding to your October email. It got lost in my Archive folder. Anyway, I have checked on your request and for the foreseeable future, we are not able to provide the issues of interest. For some time our archives has not been able to duplicate microfiche, so that option was not possible even at the time of your initial request. Our archives is in the process of having a company scan some of our miccrofiche materials, but your request is not presently among those materials. If you are still interested in eventually obtaining the materials of interest, please let me know and we will see how many months our archive folks think it might be before something could be done relative to this particular series of interest.
Again, I apologize for the failure to get back to you in a timely manner.
Sincerely,
[protecting the innocent]
In a follow up email, Hugh and Becky asked their friend how these materials affect his job and the task of Bible translation.
Here is his reply:
12 January 2009
…. To answer Hugh’s question, “what can I not do because I don’t have access to these materials?”, well, I guess the main thing is that not being able to get hold of a good variety of relevant data would affect the quality of our teaching and research, and would therefore affect our students’ learning and motivation. Having access to these materials would also help with checking students’ fieldwork data, and in some cases, students would need access to these materials for their dissertations. …
Having access means that the people who need the materials can get to the materials and use the materials in a cost effective and time efficient manner. This could be a fellow linguist, a local educator using the materials in a local school, or even a linguistics professor at a university using the materials in his curriculum. It could be another Bible translator, a local pastor, or a lay person. It could be SIL International administration or a linguistics consultant helping a translator. These people may be in a place without internet access or across the globe, so both local and remote access issues need to be addressed.