Scripture Forge: Translation Suggestions

Introduction

Scripture Forge is an online tool that works with a Paratext project. Scripture Forge allows you to collaborate on Scripture translation, engage in community checking, and get translation suggestions while you type.

This tutorial covers the translation suggestion feature only and will focus on how translation suggestions assist with translating Scripture into a related language.

Who are Translation Suggestions for?

Translation suggestions are designed for teams that are drafting Scripture from another translation in a related language.

Overview of How to Use Translation Suggestions

Here is an overview of how to use the translation suggestion feature. Detailed step-by-step instructions are below.

1. Initial setup of the projects must be done in Paratext by an administrator.
   1. Translators need access to the source project as an Observer, and the target project as a Translator.
2. After setup, translators can translate from the source to the target language, as they would in Paratext’s basic view.
3. As they work, translation suggestions will appear. Translators can accept or reject these suggestions.
4. When the work is complete, the text in Scripture Forge is synchronized with Paratext where further work would be done.

Setup Translation Suggestions for a Project (Administrators Only)

These steps must be done by an administrator.

1. First log in to https://scriptureforge.org/ with your Paratext account.
2. If you have not setup any projects in Scripture Forge:
   1. Click the Connect project button:
      
3. If you have setup projects before:
   1. Go to the Navigation pane by clicking .
   2. Go to the project list at the top of the Navigation pane.
      
   3. Click Connect project.
4. In the Connect Paratext Project window, in the Paratext Project textbox, select the target Paratext project.
5. Select Translation Suggestions to enable translation suggestion feature.
6. Click Based on to see a list of Projects and Resources. Select the source Paratext project or resource you want as the basis of the translation suggestions. Projects are Paratext projects and Resources are from the Digital Bible Library.
   The Based on project or resource is the source of the translation suggestions. The books and their layout in the project you are translating must match the books in the source project or resource.
7. Click Share to share the project with others. Select one of the following.
   1. Select Anyone with a link if you want to allow anyone who has the project link URL to view the project.
   2. Select Specific People if you want to only allow a person to view the project by responding to an emailed invitation.
8. Then click Connect.

Now the project has been setup and you are ready for Scripture editing.

Configure Translation Suggestions

Administrators need to setup the parameters for the system to make translation suggestions, you need to go to the Translation suggestions settings dialog box.

1. Choose your project from the Navigation pane. This project should the target language
2. On the toolbar click to configure translation suggestions. The Translation suggestions settings dialog box appears.
3. Translation suggestions: Click Translation suggestion switch to hide or show translation suggestions while editing Scripture in the target language. This control hides or shows suggestions for only yourself in the current project.
   1. Number of suggestions: Click the down arrow and then click the maximum number of suggestions you want to see.
   2. Suggestion confidence: Click and drag the slider control to set the percentage value that appears above the slider to see the minimum confidence level of the suggestions that can be offered. More increases the number of suggestions by including more suggestions that have a low confidence level. Better decreases the number of suggestions by including fewer suggestions that have a low confidence level.
      
4. Click Close.

Scripture Editing

1. Choose your project of your target language from the Navigation pane.
2. If the books are not showing, click Translate to show the books in the project.
3. Select a book to work on.
   
4. After selecting a book, you will see the project of the source text display on the left-hand section and the project of the target text displayed on the right-hand section.
5. Then you can select the chapter you want to translate using the right and left arrows:
   
6. Then click on the segment of the project of the source text, usually a verse or range of verses, that you want to translate. Now you can begin entering your translation in the segment.
7. While entering your translation, a suggestion may appear in a box below the segment that is being translated. Next to the suggestion you see a number, which is percentage. It indicates the confidence or quality based on previous uses.
   
8. You can accept the suggestion by clicking the suggestion or pressing then key. You can also use keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+0 to insert an entire phrase or Ctrl+  to insert that number of words, starting from the current word.

Retraining the suggestion engine

You should not need to do this often because it learns as you translate and the retrain process can take a long time. Here are reasons you should consider retraining the suggestion engine:

• You significantly changed the way you translate something, especially if it was in more than one place.
• You made a significant number of changes that resulted from a consultant check

To retrain the suggestion engine, do the following.

1. Choose your project from the Navigation pane
2. Click Translate in the menu. Then click Overview.
3. The Translate Overview dialog box appears. In the Suggestion Engine section, click Retrain.
   

Then the section changes Retrain to Training. This will take a very long time, so be patient.

Upon Completion, the number of trained segments is updated, and the quality of the suggestion engine is given by filling in the stars. The more filled in the stars are, the higher the quality.

Synchronize

The administrator or the translator can synchronize the Scripture Forge project with the Paratext repository. This includes the most recent notes that appear in Paratext.

1. Choose your project from the Navigation pane.
2. Click Synchronize in the menu.
3. Click the Synchronize button. This may take a while to run, so be patient.
   

Summary

This concludes the basics of how to use the translation suggestion feature in Scripture Forge.

We covered the following:

1. How to setup the projects in Scripture Forge.
2. How to start editing the scriptures in the target language as you would in Paratext’s basic view. As you edit, the translation suggestion feature will make translation suggestions that you can accept or reject.
3. When ready you can synchronize your Scripture Forge project with Paratext to keep you work up to date.