Kent Spielmann is the Global Translation Technology Director for Biblica. He spends most of his workday using Paratext. He manages over 80 translations in 75 different languages, making sure they are technically sound and ready for publication. Kent started in Bible translation in 1983 with SIL. In 1993 he earned a Masters in Cross-Cultural Communication with an emphasis in Bible translation from Fuller Seminary.
A Paratext Project Base Plan for Incremental Translation Projects
Abstract
We will present a five-stage Paratext Project Base Plan designed to guide an incremental translation program from initiation though initial publication. This plan improves project completion rates and translation quality, and it provides relevant project progress reporting data. The Biblica Base Plan was developed in cooperation with project team members, area translation consultants, and the typesetting and publishing team. Key features of this plan include:
• Incremental publishing: The translation is published in portions of increasing length, generally starting with Luke-Acts and ending with a Full Bible.
• Iterative translation: With every increment the team traverses the entire translation process. This increases their competency and improves the quality of the entire translation.
• Integrated translation and publishing: Typesetting is involved not just during the final stage, but at key points during the translation project.
• Progress reporting: The Project Base Plan provides data that will be properly interpreted by progress.Bible.
Other key technologies that support this approach will also be presented:
• Tagged text toolkit: This toolkit allows us to create fast, high-quality typesets for every increment at minimal cost.
• Project management dashboard: Our unified corporate Paratext repository and associated dashboard allow us to manage all translations and report progress to Management, Donors, and progress.Bible.