Learning from 2024: A Review of Scripture Forge Advancements
At Scripture Forge in 2024, we were blessed by the user community, our partners, and our growth in technical advancements. These included the following programs (links take you to our previous newsletter coverage).
AI Assist. A valuable tool that uses artificial intelligence technologies to assist in or automate the process of translating the Bible from one language to another.
Community Checking. Includes community engagement in translation projects without requiring the user to be an expert in Bible translation technology.
Back Translation. Backtranslation is a process where a text that has been translated from a widely known language (such as English) to a target language is translated back into a language of wider communication for checking purposes.
Learning Rate Adjustment Program for Speed and Accuracy
Early in 2024, Scripture Forge made a tool available for Bible translation teams to use AI to generate a draft for a book of the Bible in about 8 hours. We’re always looking for ways to use our resources and technologies to do it better and faster. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) research team was recently able to adjust the Learning Rate we are using to train the models that generate these drafts. The result is that drafting a new book is now much faster. SIL Global NLP Developer Isaac Schifferer explains:
“When a translation model is being trained, the algorithm predicts how to translate sentences. The algorithm is then adjusted automatically based on what predictions were incorrect. By changing the learning rate, we can control how large or small these adjustments are. We found that by making larger adjustments early on in the training, the model can learn what it needs to in a shorter amount of time.”
Scripture Forge Workshops: Africa
The Scripture Forge team facilitated two workshops in Africa. Fifteen teams leveraged their completed translation work to make use of AI drafting. The teams learned the basics of neural machine translation technology and gained experience in editing machine-generated drafts. They also took time to reflect on how using machine drafting will affect their translation process and data management. The teams chose to consult two different machine drafts, synthesizing the best from both into a hand-crafted first draft.
"The participation and support of SIL Africa was essential to the success of these workshops. Because translators, consultants, translation advisors, and technology support staff all participated, the workshops resulted in a local ecosystem that will continue to resource these translation teams in their use of Scripture Forge drafting into the future." said workshop facilitator Bethany Moore.
