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Translation Tools

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2015 8:39 pm
by corwinslack
Our stake has three Spanish speaking units and four English Speaking units.

I am a member if the High Council. Previously I spoke in Spanish units with a side by side translator as we do not have enough headsets for simultaneous translation.

This time I asked a faithful bilingual member to translate my talk and I created power point slides with the Spanish and gave my talk in English. The approach seems to have been appreciated. There appear to be many circumstances where this could be more effective than side by side translation and can also work both ways to facilitate teaching of the entire membership of the stake by non-English speakers.

This could be streamlined by better tools and workflows. So here are my questions?

1. Does the Church have any cloud based translation workflow tools that would allow for collaboration and content production by volunteers working solely within the stake and ward?

2. My guess is no so next question: Is there any volunteer who would be willing to write a macro that could create an XML file based on a two column table layout in Word that would place the target language text (column 2) in the slide body and the source language text (column 1) in the speaker notes?

Re: Translation Tools

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2015 8:43 pm
by sbradshaw
Generally, visual aids are not supposed to be used in sacrament meeting, but I think this was probably appropriate and a good idea.

What the Church has for employee use varies by department, but, as you guessed, they unfortunately don't have any collaborative translation tools available for local units.

If it is a frequent need, perhaps someone could be given the calling of Stake Translator or something like that.

Re: Translation Tools

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2015 9:39 pm
by russellhltn
sbradshaw wrote:Generally, visual aids are not supposed to be used in sacrament meeting,
Handbook 2: 21.1.5, and 18.4.

Information about selecting speakers are found in 18.2.2. While I know it's common, there is no requirement for a monthly speaker from the HC, nor do I see one that says the HC assignment must rotate.