Missional AI 2024
- ETEN Innovation Lab
- May 13, 2024
- 3 min read
AI Tools Accelerating Bible Translation
The 2024 Global Missional AI Summit, held from April 9th to 11th at Wycliffe Headquarters in Orlando, Florida, showcased the continued advancement of AI technologies in Bible translation. This gathering, made possible through the partnership of organizations like ETEN Innovation Lab, Biblica, SIL, and Global Media Outreach – all passionate about leveraging AI for "kingdom initiatives" – brought together over 280 individuals from 100 organizations. The event aimed to foster collaboration in using AI to spread the Bible's message around the world. The theme, "AI Collaboration Accelerated," underscored this focus on uniting experts and practitioners to share their latest advancements in AI-powered Bible translation.
The audience got to experience two tracks of content: how AI can accelerate Bible translation and Kingdom Growth. Leading experts and practitioners presented on topics like ethics, trust and the theology of AI, quality control, impact-driven AI, and multimodal AI. Attendees gained practical skills and tools for innovation, along with inspirational ideas to fuel future projects and initiatives.
Let's explore how AI is supercharging Bible translation! We'll dive into three presentations from the Missional AI Summit that showcase innovative tools and approaches:
AI Tools Enhance Quality for Translators
One of the biggest hurdles translators face is ensuring quality, especially for languages with limited resources. Researchers Joel Mathew and Dr. Ulf Hermjakob presented the Greek Room, a collaborative Lab project that offers a suite of AI tools designed to address this very challenge.
The Greek Room in Action:
Going Beyond Dictionaries: Unlike traditional spell checkers, this tool analyzes the phonetic closeness of words to identify potential errors. This is particularly helpful for languages lacking established dictionaries.
Taming "Wildebeest": This tool tackles character encoding issues, unexpected characters, and punctuation inconsistencies – common hurdles in languages using non-Latin scripts.
Visual Review Made Easy: This innovative tool visually compares the translated text to the source language, highlighting discrepancies. This allows translators to focus on areas requiring their expertise.
These advancements within the Greek Room project are a game-changer for translation projects worldwide. By streamlining workflows and enhancing trustworthiness, AI empowers translators to deliver the message with unparalleled precision.
Bridging the Data Gap for Lesser-Known Languages
For many languages spoken by millions, a lack of digital data poses a significant obstacle to machine translation. These "long-tail" languages often have minimal online presence, making it difficult to train AI models effectively.
Daniel Wilson, CEO of XRI Global, proposes a two-pronged approach to tackle this challenge:
AI Data Miners: AI agents analyze existing resources like grammar descriptions to automatically generate and translate sentences relevant to the Bible.
Mobile App Engagement: A mobile app directly collects high-quality data from native speakers by focusing on translating sentences relevant to specific Bible passages.
In a case study, XRI Global gathered 8,000 sentences in just four weeks using their mobile app, achieving a quality that native speakers found natural and trustworthy. This method holds immense promise for overcoming the data gap and ensuring under-represented languages have access to the Bible.
XRI Global aims to have data collection projects for 20 languages by summer. These projects will create support for these low-resource languages through a scalable process. Once the AI models are developed, they can be reused for Bible-related resources and for updating older translations. It would also enable the interaction of oral communities with AI voice tools.
AI-powered Steering for Faster Completion
Translating the Bible into new languages is a monumental task often slowed down by traditional, multi-phased processes. Ryder Wishart, who works with Biblica and the ETEN Innovation Lab, proposes a revolutionary approach: AI-powered "steering" to accelerate this vital work.
Imagine a real-time translation assistant, currently under development. AI tools would suggest alternative phrasings, provide context-sensitive information, and even catch errors – essentially becoming a translator's digital companion. Large language models could handle repetitive tasks, significantly speeding up the process.
This "steering" approach is particularly beneficial for languages with limited resources. Open-source tools like the Bible Aquifer and the Scribe scripture editor would empower churches and organizations to tailor the translation process to their specific needs.
The benefits extend beyond speed. AI could usher in a new era of "iterative publishing," where draft chapters are released for early community feedback, fostering a more dynamic Bible adaptable to evolving languages. Open-source, AI-assisted drafts would eliminate permission hurdles, allowing for wider distribution and adaptation.
Wishart sees AI-assistance as a revolutionary tool for accelerating Bible dissemination and fostering deeper understanding. By embracing experimentation and incorporating community feedback, these AI-powered tools have the potential to reshape the future of Bible translation.
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