Following on from my previous post The "book" of the future Theologians Without Borders has converted a comment to a stimulating post in Transferring Knowledge in a Desert of Books Jennifer Turner puts the experience of teaching in Africa where "libraries were very sparse, due both to shortage of funds and lack of materials in the local language" with the sight of an OLPC laptop, to generate the dream that we might "skip to the next generation of knowledge transfer" by putting a library on such a machine for village pastors. How about we put these two posts together, and then tweak the results a bit?
At selected centres (like theological colleges) someone provides a laptop stacked with out of copyright or e-texts for which permission had been given. Senior pastors with a good command of the "imperial" language (English, French or whatever) then read selected works a paragraph at a time into the built-in microphone, translating into their mother tongue as they go. It would not be an accurate translation, and it might well include explanation, but that would just make it more useful!
It is in the senior pastors' interest to help, because they get to base a laptop at their home (their kids will nag them into it) and the churches they are responsible for will respect them even more.
These audio books get loaded onto mobile phones (or MP3 players) for village pastors and others. The result semi-literate (and lets face it in much of the world village pastors are often either semi-literate or less than fluently literate) pastors get real solid stimulus and information for a fraction of the cost of print.
It is in the village pastors' interest to listen because they will seem better educated, without all the hassle and risk to their status involved in moving from partial to full literacy.
Do the maths! For a district with say 20 local churches:
- cost of one laptop, loaded with "books" $250
- plus 20 MP3 players @ $30 = $600
All we need are:
- enough people to catch the vision
- publishers of texts like the Africa Bible Commentary to be willing to see their print editions reach extended twenty-fold
- people to "sell" the idea to senior pastors
- a bunch of Western agencies to give up their fetish for print!
Labels: audio, bible, biblical.studies.online, copyright, digital, education, publication
¶ 11:30 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
So much more can be done with audio, esp. for people in oral societies. Print is good but it can stifled us, to some extent, in the West.
Thanks for posting this, Tim. I hope many catch the vision.
I just posted about "hearing" on BBB.
By 
Wayne Leman, at
October 24, 2008 12:05 PM
I might suggest working with TransWorld Radio and FEBA and the like instead. They have trained announcers working in many of the languages of Africa and anything they produce will be transmitted to a large population.
That proliferation of gadgets worries me...
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 12:23 PM
Thanks both!
David, I think minimal gadgets (one laptop per language and MP3 players where mobile phones are scarce), and do the radio stations actually transmit is tribal languages or just in the major trade languages? In Congo we had 5 trade languages but c250 mother tongues...
...and, anyway why not both and...
If only people would first publish with something like a CC license ;) so that adaptations were possible... still Matthew Henry tradapted (TM = adapted in the process of approximate quick and dirty translation) into Africa could be more appropriate than a modern print work translated accurately ;)
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:37 PM
PS @David, if I read the statistics right 32% of Mozambicans mother tongue is not one of the several most-used languages in the country...
By Tim, at
October 24, 2008 12:40 PM
True, Mozambique is a special case with relatively few languages. I don't know what radio is like in a country with mucho languages. But my suspicion is that languages of wider influence are covered and possibly community radio transmits in the local dialects.
This is good stuff you're pondering and I hope you don't think I'm being disagreeable.
By David Ker, at
October 24, 2008 3:43 PM
I think Literacy Bridge aims to get suitable audio devices down to USD$5.
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By 
, at
October 24, 2008 3:46 PM
There are already several translation projects involving the Africa Bible Commentary. The French version for Francophone Africa will be released in early November 2008, and the Swahili translation will be ready in 2009. A Portuguese translation for Mozambique and Angola and an Amharic translation for North Africa are in progress. People are welcome to apply to the Board for translation rights into other languages.
These translations won't cover 600 languages, but they will cover a big chunk of Africa. And they will be fairly accurate translations vetted by experts in the language, which the recorded versions wouldn't be.
By , at
October 24, 2008 4:06 PM
Tim, see futurebible for anonymous' identity.
