Issue No. 5
Several exciting things from the month of September: a Bible translation technology report from the field, ChatGPT goes multi-modal, and why manual work is a bug.
But first, what is TechNews.Bible?
TechNews.Bible is intended to be a community resource that enables Bible Translation technologists to discover, learn, share, and collaborate. Read about the backstory and intentions of the newsletter here.
∴ News
The Tech and Testament Podcast Launches
We have a new outlet for news and information sharing among Bible Translation technologists! This new podcast explores new developments in artificial intelligence and translation technology. The podcast itself is translated into several languages using machine translation and has translated audio produced using text-to-speech technology from Coqui. Hosted by Daniel Whitenack at PredictionGuard and presented by the Every Tribe Every Nation Innovation Lab.
Adapt It Mobile Releases v 1.12.0 for iOS, Android
Adapt It is a free, open-source translation editor that is used to quickly translate between related languages. This release of the mobile version adds support for importing translation memory knowledge bases from formats like Translation Memory Exchange (TMX), Lexical Interchange Format (Lift), SFM Key Terms files, and more. Learn more about Adapt It Mobile and Adapt It.
ChatGPT Can Now See, Hear, and Speak
Multi-modal interactions are being slowly rolled out to ChatGPT users. "Voice" enables live conversations with language models. "Image" functionality includes not only generating images via DALL-E, but images can also be used as input, the content of which is intelligible to the language model. Reactions online seem to range from "Let's call it HAL and get this over with" to fairly optimistic. I, for one, am excited to explore the new features in the context of Bible study.
∴ Continuous Learning
Technological Insights from Papua New Guinea Field Visit
This is a report from a field visit in Papua New Guinea. The report describes the Church-Based Bible Translation projects in the Milne Bay province of Papua New Guinea. The AVTT tool is used heavily for the Familiarization and Internalization stage of the process. Many thanks to the ETEN Innovation Lab for sharing this report!
Manual Work is a Bug
This classic article exposits always be automating -- a mindset and technique for technical knowledge work. Written from the perspective of a system administrator, the principles described are widely applicable. The four phases of automation described in the article are probably more relevant to remote work settings today than they were when it was originally written. Highly recommended. From Thomas Limoncelli.
What is RLHF?
As exciting developments in generative AI continue, technologists and innovators are bombarded by new terms and acronyms. This article demystifies a concept called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, commonly referred to as RLHF.
∴ Upcoming Events
Bible Translation Conference, Oct 13 - 17
The biennial Bible Translation Conference is going back to in-person format in Dallas for the first time since 2019. Historically this conference has been very helpful for me as I've tried to better understand the Bible Translation domain. If you will be at the conference, let's connect!
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