A Few Answered Questions (FAQ)


Maybe if somebody would ask some questions, they might become frequent enough to name a FAQ after them.

Is the BibleTrans website "unsafe"?
What about Wycliffe Bible Translators?
2026?
Can I use BibleTrans to translate the Bible into [whatever] language today?
Can we "crowd-source" the semantic database?
What about Artificial Intelligence?
What is "Open Source"?
What happened to "BibleTrans.com"?
Why ".info"?
What happened to BibleTrans International?
Why don't I see any progress lately?
How does BibleTrans compare to The Bible Translator's Assistant?

Rev. 2017 February 18
 

Is the BibleTrans website "unsafe"?

Nonsense. You probably got that from the Google Chrome browser. Google makes money from their advertizers, and some of their advertizers make money selling certificates for website encryption. Follow the money.

Does encryption make a website "safe"? That depends on what you are trying to do. The function and purpose of encryption is to hide things, so if the purpose of your website is to hide things from the public, encryption is a way to do that. A better way to do that is to not put it on the internet. Nothing is really safe on the internet, not even if it is encrypted. BibleTrans has nothing to hide, so encryption, which prevents legitimate users from legitimate access to public information, is counter-productive.

Some "experts" might tell you that encryption protects information from corruption, but it's not true. The easy way to corrupt data on a website is to change it on the server's hard drives. Good Guys and Bad Guys alike know how to do that, and that happens before any encryption, so the encryption (if any) only protects the already corrupted data. Theoretically it is possible to intercept the data in transit and substitute the corrupt data, but to do that requires physical access to the cable somewhere along the line. It could happen on the server premises, but anybody with access there can corrupt the data on the hard drives much more easily. It's not going to happen on the telephone poles -- and even less likely in underground cables -- because you need power and a bulky computer and hard-to-attach cable connectors to do the dastardly deed. It might happen on your own premises, where the internet enters your office or home, but you (or the security guys in your office building) would notice the villains. Or it could happen by a virus inside your own computer, but again, that's outside the coverage offered by encryption.

If the website is offering secret data to a few people with passwords, Bad Guys on the same local network -- perhaps the same cable network in one block, or in a vacant office in the same office building, or on an unencrypted WAN -- could watch the data go by (they cannot alter it, but they can look), and learn the secrets if it's not encrypted. But like I said, BibleTrans is public information, we have nothing to hide, so encryption offers no benefits and considerable downside.

Mostly Bad Guys have things to hide. Maybe that's why some people are pushing encryption: If only secrets are encrypted, then the cops and robbers know who to spend their efforts on to expose those secrets, but if everything is encrypted, they can't tell the secrets from the public information. We have no desire to help Bad Guys do Bad Things, so we believe an unencrypted internet is in the public interest. Other people may have other opinions, but they are wrong ;-)
 

What about Wycliffe Bible Translators?

Wycliffe Bible Translators (and SIL International, which is almost the same) are the world's foremost experts in linguistics and translation, as acknowledged by even the unbelievers. They are professionally competent to know that good machine translation is not possible. And they are right! -- Except BibleTrans doesn't do it that way. When a Wycliffe linguist takes the time to look at how BibleTrans works, and considers an actual translation into a language they are familiar with, their comments tend to become favorable. We are working with a small number of Wycliffe people at this time to develop suitable materials for explaining BibleTrans to the rest of them.

The problem is that Wycliffe has a huge intellectual investment in manual translation methods. All Wycliffe management and trainers are former translators who finished their translations too early to retire; the other translators, the ones less skillful at manual methods (who would thus benefit more from BibleTrans), are still working on it and never get promoted to management or training positions, so they never have a chance to influence policy decisions.
 

2026

In 1999 Wycliffe set out their corporate "Vision 2025" to have a translation started in every language that needs it by year 2025. With BibleTrans we can finish all those translations by year 2026. We can do it!
 

Can I use BibleTrans to translate the Bible into [whatever] language today?

Not yet. The software is working, but BibleTrans needs the whole Bible (or at least the New Testament) encoded (translated) into its semantic database before it can be translated into any human language. This is a huge job (see Business Plan). So far we have the whole epistle to the Philippians and four chapters of Luke encoded. Pray the Lord of the harvest, that He will send out laborers...
 

Can we "crowd-source" the semantic database?

The latest rage in distributed labor is using volunteers working on the internet. It's a great idea for easy but tedious human tasks, such as pattern recognition. The key term is "easy". Encoding the New Testament into a usable semantic database is a huge and complex job that requires a lot of training and attention to detail. Volunteers unwilling to spend full time on it cannot keep all the details in mind. My paid employee, who was an expert in Greek exegesis, made too many mistakes when her timecard dropped below 20 hours per week.
 

What about Artificial Intelligence?

My minor in grad school was artificial intelligence (AI) so I know quite a lot about it. When I taught computer science in college, I told my students that it's a fraud based on the erroneous supposition of Darwinism. In the real world computers don't get smarter by running themselves, they get smarter by smart people pouring human intelligence into them the hard way, by keyboard and mouse. BibleTrans knows that. Smart (or at least well-trained) people put all the smarts in. Almost any person is smarter than the smartest computer.
 

What is "Open Source"?

The software Marxists like to believe in the concept of "free software" (their term), which they insist means "free as in free speech" but from their actions you can see they really mean "free as in free beer" (again, their terms). I'm no Marxist, but I also recognize that there's no profit in Bible translation (except into English, see Why ".com"?). Open Source is a way to make the BibleTrans software available to volunteers after I'm gone.
 

What happened to "BibleTrans.com"?

Dot-Com is the abbreviation "top-level domain" for commercial web sites. It also gets used by a lot of non-profits and individual people who do not understand what the "com" stands for. On 2002 January 7 an agent of the IRS determined that Bible translation into languages that do not already have it is a profit-making venture. There is no historical nor financial evidence to support their "determination" (an IRS technical term), but who says facts ever stopped the government. They are, after all, "God's instruments of righteousness..." So the domain name "BibleTrans.com" reflected the reality invented by the IRS. There is of course no commercial profit in this venture -- never was, never will be -- but it's fun to pretend. Besides, the government says there is profit, and I'm giving due diligence toward proving them correct. For a while BibleTrans.com still pointed here to this same web site. Then my web host bungled something and I lost the domain. It was snapped up by a squatter. I believe there was something unethical going on, but the evidence is circumstantial, and the web host is unwilling to help.
 

Why ".info"?

This website is for information about BibleTrans. It used to be called "BibleTrans.com" but I made the mistake of using as host some fly-by-night company that spends a lot of money advertizing, but has no physical presence in the USA. Judging from the language on their error messages, the servers might be in eastern Europe somewhere, their telephone support people admit to being in the Philippines, and their domain is registered to some address in an inaccessible Caribbean island hideaway. They changed their software so I could no longer maintain the website. Suspecting potential foul play, I created the new domain "BibleTrans.info" on a different host in case I could not get the old domain transfered to the new host. In retrospect that was a good plan, but I like the new domain as better reflecting the nature of this web site. Then I completely lost BibleTrans.com when the new host bungled the transfer. So BibleTrans.info is all I have at this time.
 

What happened to BibleTrans International?

BibleTrans International was incorporated as a California non-profit corporation on 2000 May 8. (I might say unfortunately), God did not give me the administrative skills necessary to assemble and motivate a team of people into a long-term commitment to computer-assisted Bible translation. When the IRS returned an adverse determination (see Why ".com"?), they decided to roll over and disband instead of meeting the reasonable concerns of the IRS. After getting my shattered finances back under control, I picked up the pieces and here I am today...
 

Why don't I see any progress lately?

The software works (download it here). I'm not very good at obtaining funding (see Business Plan) nor at persuading volunteers to build the database on their own nickel, but occasional techies (including translators) are interested in the technology. My only hope at this time to see deployment is to convert it to "open source" and pray that the right people stumble onto it. That requires some rewrite and better build tools (also known as "infrastructure"), which I am currently working on. Some of the Design Documentation is also online and being improved from time to time.
 

How does BibleTrans compare to The Bible Translator's Assistant?

I prepared a separate document comparing The Bible Translator's Assistant (TBTA) to BibleTrans. They are two similar but significantly different ways to do computer-assisted Bible translation. I think BibleTrans is better, but you can download working software in both cases. Try them out.
 

Back to BibleTrans home page