Up to Speed
For nearly five years, the Bible translation headquarters in Guinea-Bissau operated without a crucial resource: the Internet.
Today, it’s available around-the-clock.
The upgrade is part of an overall JAARS project to provide adequate Internet connections for many of the 53 translation centers throughout Africa. These offices provide a wide range of support services, such as training, housing, translation assistance and administrative oversight—but many must totter along without modern resources available on the Web.
Thus, they forgo countless tools: High-speed email. Distance training. Research materials. Financial services. Corporate intranets. Video conferencing.
“We have spent years developing systems—Web-based systems—to work as a team in Bible translation, with the idea that we could all participate,” says Bill Mayes, JAARS liaison to Africa.
“However,” he adds, “Africa was getting left behind.”
This was certainly the case in Lendem, the hub for Bible translation in Guinea-Bissau. The center—managed by the Evangelical Church of Guinea-Bissau—currently houses eight personnel and often hosts Guinean translators for workshops on translation, literacy and Scripture use.
Yet until recently, the nearest Internet connection was 50 miles away.
“You’d have to drive an hour, hour and fifteen minutes to go to the city for Internet,” says Clinton Dix, who oversees the country’s language programs. “You’d have to go for at least a day, but you might go for a weekend.”
Once there, translators and support personnel visited Internet cafés, which are notorious for viruses. For each trip, workers shelled out precious funds for travel, accommodations and hourly Internet fees.
Understandably, the Web was an occasional luxury.
In late 2007, JAARS came alongside the center to help overhaul this ever-hindering setup. Our information technology personnel worked for more than a year on the project—surveying the site, researching and designing a plan, rewiring the center’s electricity, designing the network, and purchasing and configuring equipment.
Then, in early 2009, two JAARS personnel—Bill Foust and Galen Stutzman—traveled to Guinea-Bissau to pull it all together. They worked alongside "Uncle" Lima, a Guinean handyman, to install:
- A two-kilowatt solar power system.
- Continuous satellite Internet.
- A wireless access point.
- Ethernet cables in three buildings.
- Battery backup power in three staff apartments.
The team also connected the center’s three main buildings with buried fiber-optic cables, creating a reliable on-campus network.
Today, translators and support personnel can pop on the Internet whenever necessary—to download Windows updates, contact the JAARS help desk, browse linguistic resources or talk with their loved ones via Skype.
In addition, translators can now send manuscripts for “virtual consulting,” a practice that is rapidly gaining popularity. Rather than waiting for translation consultants to visit a village and review drafts, translation teams can receive instant feedback via email.
“That fact alone will make the translations so much more accurate and dynamic,” says Dix.
“It’s so incredibly nice to finally be able to call people, talk with our families and supporting churches, and be connected with the world,” writes Liz Nicoleti, a coordinator who lives at the Lendem center. “My job is easier now that I can email people quickly and get responses without worrying whether the [cell] phone signal will be good enough, or how big the email is, or if we have enough credit to download [an email].”
“The first day we had Internet,” she concludes, “we were all walking around with huge smiles on our faces, not able to believe that 24-hour, good Internet was available to us in Lendem!”
Dozens of translation centers in Africa continue to struggle without adequate Internet connections. To learn more about this plight—and how you can help—read our Upgrades for Regional Translation Centers project profile.
