2.0 Release Notes
Release 2.0 Overview
This release of translationCore marks a momentous occasion for Bible translation! For the first time in history, a translator can check their translation by working through a pre-identified list of checks that identify Figures of Speech. Each translationNotes check has a unique description for that instance as well as a generic article describing the category (e.g. “Metaphor,” “Synecdoche,” “Metonymy,” etc.) and identifying good translation practice. As with the translationWords tool, these checks are presented in a pivoted view so that all checks within a category are presented together before progressing to the next category. Finally, all of these checks are designed to be translated into Gateway Languages and presented in translationCore in a language the translator understands well.
Additionally, enhancements have been made to the translationWords tool and it has been enhanced to support the whole Bible. Finally, the Word Alignment tool has seen multiple enhancements including Alignment Memory being drawn from across an entire Testament (rather than just one book).
Major New Features
- translationNotes tool - This tool functions exactly like the translationWords tool but presents the user with different checks based on different content. Each check highlights a word or phrase to be checked and presents a unique note for that instance (in the blue Check Info Bar). The user is also presented with a translationAcademy article describing the type of check it is, for instance, “Metaphor,” “Synecdoche,” “Metonymy,” etc. (in the gray translationHelps Pane). When loading the tool, the user can select which types of checks they want to perform. For convenience, all these have been organized into these categories: “Culture,” “Discourse,” “Figures of Speech,” “Grammar,” “Numbers,” and “Other”.
- Allow checking for any “unlocked” Old Testament Book - Now any book of the Bible can be checked from any Gateway Language with both translationWords and translationNotes, dependent upon content requirements being met. To check a book of the Bible in either tool, the Gateway Language must have that book aligned to the UGNT or UHB. Furthermore, to check with the translationWords tool, translationWords must be translated. To check with the translationNotes tool, translationAcademy must be translated and the translationNotes for that book must be translated. (Note: All content must be published to the Door43 Catalog. To check for updated content, click Action / Check for Content Updates. If content updates result in the content requirements being met, those books will automatically be “unlocked” for that Gateway Language in tC.)
- “No Selection Needed” toggle - This feature was added to the translationWords and translationNotes tools. It allows a user to indicate that the check was completed, even if there is no selection that can be made. Toggling “No Selection Needed” will result in the green checkmark showing in the navigation menu. A new filter was also added so that a user can find all checks where “Not Selection Needed” was toggled on.
- Discontiguous merging of Original Language words - In the Word Alignment tool, any Original Language word may now be merged with any other Original Language word. (This feature allows a phrase like “ὁ δὲ θεὸς” to be aligned more granularaly as “δὲ” > “but” and “ὁ + θεὸς” > “God” instead of forcing the whole phrase to be aligned like this: “ὁ δὲ θεὸς” > “but God”.)
- Whole language Alignment Memory - In the Word Alignment tool, every alignment is saved as “Alignment Memory”. Any time the user navigates to a new verse, translationCore scans the Alignment Memory to see if there is a match between the Target Language words in the Word Bank and the Original Language words in the Alignment Pane. All matches are suggested to the user and can be accepted or rejected. All Alignment Memory is constrained by the language and identifier (think “NIV”, “KJV”, etc.). With this feature, Alignment Memory is now drawn from across the entire Testament (instead of just that book). In this way, alignments done in Matthew will now populate alignment suggestions in Mark (and alignments from Matthew and Mark will populate suggestions for Luke, etc.)
Other New Features and Bug Fixes
- Multiple Greek New Testaments available for reference - Though the data in translationCore is still based off of the unfoldingWord Green New Testament (UGNT), the Majority Text and Tischendorf have been added as reference texts. (Note: these are not bundled with tC, but can be downloaded via “Source Content Update”.)
- Bug fix for exporting Revelation Projects - A bug was fixed that prevented Revelation projects from being exported. Another bug was fixed that falsely reported successful export even though it actually failed.
- Downloaded Bibles are retained when tC is updated - A bug was fixed that deleted all non-bundled Bible resources when tC was upgraded. Now these resources do not need to be re-downloaded and are immediately available for viewing upon upgrade.
- Hebrew font updated - The bundled font used to display Hebrew was updated so that it now displays correctly on all computers and operating systems.
- Bug fix for spinning logo processing screens - A bug was fixed that cause the spinning tC logo indicating processing is taking place to sometimes not display right away.
- Performance enhancements for “Checking for invalidations” - Optimization to speed the process of checking for breaking changes.
- Bug fix to clear “activated” words - In the Word Alignment tool, Target Words in the Word Bank can be “activated” for multi-select. Now they are “de-activated” when the user opens a dialog or navigates to a different verse.
- Multiple panes now draggable - The Expanded Scripture Pane, the Edit Pane, and the Expanded Translation Helps Pane are all draggable so that the user can see what is underneath them.
- New filter in Word Alignment Tool - The new “Unaligned words” filter will only display verses that have either a Target Word or an Original Language word that is unaligned.
- Bug fix to prevent text overflow - A bug was fixed that caused very long verses to overflow in the verse check pane in the tW tool.
- Optimizations to “Update Gateway Language Content” downloader - When downloading multiple resources, this feature would sometimes fail, now fixed.
- Unnecessary tool reload removed - Now a user can go back and forth between the stepper and the loaded tool without reloading the tool, unless the project, Gateway Language, tool, or types of checks on the Tool card are changed.
- Gateway Language selections are persisted - When a user selects a Gateway Language from which to check their project, this selection is now persisted for that project.
Known Bugs
- Sometimes wrong selection info displayed in navigation menu in tN tool - If a book has multiple checks in the same verse for a given category, if the user exits the tool and re-enters the tool, one of the checks may display the wrong information (track here).
- Previous GL selection not persisted after project reimport - When a user reimports a project, previous choices for GLs on the tool cards are not persisted and the user must reselect the GL from which to check (track here).
- After reimport, invalidations counter on tool card not updated - If a user reimports a project, the invalidations counter is not updated and can be out of sync with the actual number of invalidations a project has (track here).
- Changing locale while on Tools page does not propagate right away - If locale is changed while on Tools page, the user must do something before the change actually appears on the screen (track here).
- Percentage complete not always accurate - On the tool cards, the percentage complete indicator will sometimes indicate 100% even if there are missing checks or alignments (track here).
- Suggestions in Word Alignment tool are sometimes out of order - Suggestions in the Word Alignment tool sometimes appear out of order for multiple instances of the same word (track here).
- Alignment Complete toggle not persisted on import - If a user imports a USFM3 file, all the “Alignment Complete” toggles will be turned off and progress will display as 0% (track here).
- When creating new repo, a failure message is displayed even if successful - If a user changes the information about a project and selects to create a new repo, a failure message is thrown even when it is successful, and the failure message states that it was not renamed even though that was not the chosen action (track here).
How to Install
The installation files are available on the translationCore v2.0 release page or go to https://translationcore.com.
Windows Only
- The installation may include installing an update to the .Net framework. After the installation completes, a .Net install dialog may remain on the screen. If that happens just click Cancel.
- The installation of Git is part of the installation process. If Git 2.9.2 or greater is not already on the computer, ensure the checkbox for installing Git is checked on the installation dialog. At the end of the installation if automatically starting tC, you may receive a message indicating that Git needs to be installed. If that message appears, just click the “Close translationCore” button, then restart tC (the app, not the installation).
- After installation, starting the application can take a long time (7+ minutes on some machines). Please be patient. Subsequent launches of tC will be faster, but may still take a few minutes.
Mac Only
- Install latest Git if Git 2.9.2 if it is not already on the computer.
- Go to Git - Downloading Package and the executable should automatically download.
- If your download hasn’t started, click the link that says “Click here to download manually.”
- Open the downloaded file
- If your Mac’s permissions did not allow the installation to start then follow the following instructions:
- Go to System preferences
- Open Security & privacy
- Click on the “Open anyway” button at the bottom
- Then click open
- The installation should automatically start.
- Click continue
- Then Install
- It might take a few minutes to open tC the first time. Please be patient.
- If you have updated to High Sierra and get a message about Git being required, you will need to open your terminal and run:
xcode-select --install
- If you have updated to Mojave and get a message about Git being required, you will need to open your terminal and run:
xcode-select --install
sudo xcode-select -s /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
- If this does not work, you can launch the app from the command line. Open the terminal and run:
/Applications/translationCore.app/Contents/MacOS/translationCore
Product Overview
The 2.0 release added some much-desired breadth of scope. Here is a brief overview of what translationCore can do.
- General functions
- User management - Log in with Door43 credentials or continue as Guest.
- Data management - All actions performed on the text are captured in the project’s metadata.
- Project local import/export - Move projects from your file system to translationCore and back.
- Project upload/download from Door43 - Move projects from Door43 to translationCore and back.
- Project re-import - Re-import a project with updated text without losing the existing alignments and checking data.
- Export all checking data to CSV - Access all checking, edit, comment, and bookmark data.
- Support for USFM2 and USFM3 - Import and export projects using industry-standard format.
- Localized user interface - App can be localized into any language (see below). (Note: Localization is crowd-sourced. If any string has not been translated into a given locale, tC will display the English string.)
- Dynamic source content update - Update source content from Door43 Catalog.
- Check for software update - Check to see if app is up to date.
- All Tools
- Gateway Languages support - The source text and all translation helps can be changed to the Gateway Language the speaker knows best. For Gateway Language support to be active, the following is needed in the Door43 Catalog:
- For translationWords tool:
- translationWords translated into the GL.
- Aligned GL (for the book being checked).
- For translationNotes tool:
- translationNotes translated into the GL (for the book being checked).
- translationAcademy translated into the GL.
- Aligned GL (for the book being checked).
- For Word Alignment tool:
- A translated Original Language glossary corresponding to the Testament (OL-Greek for NT, OL-Hebrew/Aramaic for OT).
- For translationWords tool:
- Full Bible support - Check or align any book of the Bible (based on content aligned & translated into the GL as outlined above).
- View parallel translations - Reference original language and gateway language resources alongside the target translation.
- Verse edit - If the translation can be improved, the user may edit the translation.
- Invalidated checks support - If a verse is edited, tC checks if any previous selections or alignments have been invalidated by the edit. If so, the user is notified what work has been invalidated.
- Original Language helps- A basic Original Language lexicon and morphological data for each word is available.
- Filter checks - Each navigation menu may be filtered to help the user find what they are looking for.
- Gateway Languages support - The source text and all translation helps can be changed to the Gateway Language the speaker knows best. For Gateway Language support to be active, the following is needed in the Door43 Catalog:
- translationWords & translationNotes tools
- Full support for all checks:
- translationWords - Categories: “Key Terms,” “Other Terms,” and “Names”.
- translationNotes - Categories: “Culture,” “Discourse,” “Figures of Speech,” “Grammar,” “Numbers,” and “Other”.
- Pre-identified “checklist” for each category - Ensure nothing is accidently skipped by working through the pre-identified list derived by translation experts.
- Words being checked are highlighted in aligned parallel translations - All aligned Gateway translations highlight how the words being checked have been translated in that version for easy comparison.
- Select your translation for all checks - Select how the word being checked was translated.
- Just-in-time learning - Read the translationWords, translationNotes, and translationAcademy articles to better understand the concept and how to translate it.
- Comment - The user may leave a free-form comment on the check.
- Bookmark your check - The user may bookmark any check for future reference.
- Full support for all checks:
- Word Alignment tool
- Drag and drop alignment - Users may drag the words of their translation from a word list and drop it on the original language word(s) to which it correlates.
- Various alignment pairing options - One-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many pairings are all supported.
- Alignment memory suggestions - Each translation/original pairing is saved so that if this pairing comes up in a future verse, the pairing is suggested.
- Discontiguous Original Language merging - Any Original Language word may now be merged with any other Original Language word.
translationCore is free and both the software and all its content are open licensed. It is our prayer that this software will help facilitate the checking of Bible translations and will result in the growth and strengthening of the Church.
We Need Your Help!
There are two major ways you can help us improve translationCore:
- Leave user feedback - As you find bugs, nuisances, typos, or have other suggested improvements for tC, please use the user feedback to send us those suggestions! (Go to the Actions menu and click “User Feedback”.)
- App Localization - If you notice that some of the translated user interface verbiage can be improved or if you would like tC to be localized to a new language, you can help! We are using a crowd-sourced platform to localize translationCore. Localization text for tC is spread across three projects: translationCore translations in Crowdin, translationWords translations in Crowdin, translationNotes translations in Crowdin, and wordAlignment translations in Crowdin. To help, you must create a user profile, select the correct language, find the correct word or phrase that needs to be improved, and suggest a change! If you would like to start a new language, contact us at help@door43.org and we’ll complete the initial setup for you. (Note: all changes will be incorporated in the next release of tC.)