a part of the drafting process

Today I sat and watched words appear on the screen of my computer for more than thirty minutes.  They appeared at more than 130 words per minute, thus it was faster than I've ever managed to type for that long.  At the end of those thirty minutes, three and a half chapters of a first draft of Luke were on my computer for the first time.

The draft of chapter 7 mid-transfer.

Our translation team uses an AlphaSmart to type the drafts.  It runs on 3 AAA batteries and is easily transportable so they are able to carry it with them to and from their village and work without electricity.

The two are connected, but it's not time to push send because there isn't a document open on my computer yet.

Once the draft has been typed, we use a printer cord to plug the AlphaSmart into my laptop.  When the connection has been made, we hit the send button and the data is transferred from one device to another.  However, we learned the hard way that if you don't have a document open and waiting for the data the computer goes a bit haywire until you stop the transfer!  The first time we tried it, I thought my computer had gone psycho!

Here's a short video so you can see what it looks like. 

Once the transfer is complete, I'm able to clean up the spacing, add in the heading and verse coding, and import the text into Paratext, our translation software.  When the draft is in Paratext, we're able to look at the draft and back translation side-by-side as we go through our team check.  There are many, many things that Paratext allows us to do, but perhaps I'll write more about that another time.

This is an old picture because I didn't have my camera out today to get one of Paratext on my computer.  This one shows three languages side by side -- 1. A language in Manus Province, 2.  English, 3.  Tok Pisin.