Paratext is well known for its ability to synchronize data among multiple team members both online and offline. It was designed for use in areas with low bandwidth or no Internet, and so most teams are aware of its ability to synchronize data on a flashdrive. Very few people, however, know about another very useful collaboration option, even though it appears prominently in the Send/Receive dialog box each time you use it.

That option is Chorus Hub. It makes it possible to do Send/Receive over a local network, without using the Internet. Chorus Hub is a small program that you install on one (and only one) of the computers in your team. After you download and install it, it runs in the background and makes itself visible to the other Paratext computers on the network.

In the image above, notice that a computer with the name MARC-PC is running Chorus Hub. The other Paratext computers scan the network, find the Chorus Hub on Marc’s computer, and offer it as a choice for Send/Receive.  In a translation office with poor Internet, all you need is a WiFi access point that is plugged in and running. Even if it is not connected to the Internet, it is the connection point that allows all the computers to share data using Send/Receive in a fraction of the time it would take over a slow Internet connection. If you are paying for bandwidth, it will also save money to do a Send/Receive locally, and sending to the Internet occasionally as a backup and for outside team members.

If you use Paratext Live for working together on a text simultaneously, a Chorus Hub can greatly improve performance when working in the same room as a team. And for normal office days, you can schedule Send/Receive to be done every hour over Chorus Hub using the schedule button. If you have questions about any of these features, you can look them up in the Paratext help menu.

Chorus Hub is developed by SIL for use in synchronizing lexical or Scripture data and can be found at https://software.sil.org/chorushub/

Paratext 8 has a built-in system for tracking your translation team’s progress that can give an estimate of how much time it will take to accomplish your project’s goal.  This can be useful for the team during yearly planning sessions when tasks are assigned to various team members. It can also allow administrators to track their team’s progress and be notified of potential issues long before the next planning and review session.  But if you are going to take advantage of these features, you need to do a bit of configuring.

The first step, of course, is to select a project plan and customize it for your team.  You can learn how to do this by viewing this set of 8 short videos on how to set up and administer the project plan.

Once you have the project plan in place and are using it, you can start to benefit from the progress charts in Paratext 8. These charts are found on the Paratext menu at Projects -> Project Charts… They provide a detailed overview of where the project is currently at using three different views: By Book, By Book and Stage, and Forecast Line Chart.  The last of these needs you to set an expected completion date in the Paratext Registry so that it can contrast your current rate of progress against the target. If no date has been set, Paratext will show this warning at the top of the chart:

To set the target date, you must go to Project Properties and Settings on the Project menu.  You will see an option to Manage registration…

Clicking it takes you to the Paratext registry where you will have to log in with the email address and password you used to register for Paratext.  On that page you will see a place to put the start and expected finish dates for the project.

Once these have been added, Paratext can begin to plot the project’s progress on a trajectory toward the completion date.  In the example below, the black line shows progress to date and the dotted line shows the project’s current trajectory towards completion. When the line falls in the green zone, it shows that progress is going ahead of schedule. But when the line falls in the pink zone, it means that progress is falling behind.

In the example above, you can see that the project is expected to finish in September of 2018 instead of the target date of January 2018.  It may be that this team needs to readjust their expectations for the project completion date, but it also may be that they need to start striving harder to reach that goal.  In either case, it is helpful to have a visual of the team’s progress.

The remaining two charts give more detail.  The following examples are from a sample project with only five books in the project scope.

Progress Chart: By Book

The book chart gives a quick look at the overall progress for each book.  The progress is calculated based on the number of tasks for each book and the effort levels (verses per day) of each task. The effort levels can be adjusted in the project plan to more accurately match your team’s speed.

Progress Chart: By Book and Stage

Similar to the Book chart, this chart shows what stage each book is at and the level of progress for each stage. The six stages shown here are part of the SIL plan, but your project’s plan may be different.

Give the project plan a try! You’ll benefit by being guided through the various translation tasks, and will also to have a better way to measure your team’s progress.

 

 

Paratext 8 is slowly but surely getting new resources added.  Not as fast as everyone would like, of course, but negotiating new licenses for the texts we have used in the past has proven challenging. Not only that, but in a number of cases, the texts we want to use are not yet uploaded to the Digital Bible Library.  Yet progress is being made because almost every time you open Paratext 8 and go to the Download/Install Resources dialog box, you will see certain items marked as new  or updated .  Paratext checks to see which resources have been added since you last looked, and it also checks for newer versions of the resources that you have installed.

In the past couple days there was a flood of updated resources, and you might be wondering what has changed.  It seems that the resources that were available were limited to the canonical books of the Bible and didn’t include any glossaries or extra-Biblical material that may have been included with the resource.  A change had to be made to the repository to fix this, and now all of these updates are coming across, with new content.

It isn’t always a significant update.  For example, for those who have access to the NIV 84 edition, the update is a table of weights and measures found in the extra book “BAK”.  But the update to the World English Bible (accessible to all) includes a glossary with 94 different entries found in the extra book “GLO”. It is very helpful to have model glossaries to look at when preparing your own.  We haven’t looked at all the new goodies that have become available in this recent change to the resource repository.  Please explore on your own and see what new content you can find!

Registering for Paratext 8 was simple enough, you simply went to registry.paratext.org and authenticated with your email address, selecting your organization, and filling out four other blanks–only one of which is mandatory. Simple enough, that is, if you had a connection to the Internet and a G Suite (Google-based) email address. If you didn’t, you were out of luck–although we knew this limitation was only temporary.

Well, now the capability has been added to the registry site for two new registration options, neither of which require a Google account.

A project administrator can manually register users on the registry site.

This option allows project administrators to register their team members. When you log into registry.paratext.org and go to the Users tab, you should see a button that says “Register New User”

 

Please be aware, this button will only work if you are an administrator on one or more projects in the registry.  To become an administrator, you have to register a new project or migrate an existing project. If the project is already registered, you would have to be given administrator permissions by the administrator of that project.

When you click the button to register a new user, you are able to add the user’s name, organization, country, field unit, supervisor, and reason for using Paratext. This will create a code and send it to your email address.

This type of registration code comes with some restrictions.  The newly registered user will be able to participate in projects and use resources, but cannot become administrator on a project or register projects of their own until they sign up for themselves on the registry site.

Later, when a user who has been registered by a third party wants to fully register, they can do so by creating a new registration with either a Google account or just an email address.  The registry gives them the option of connecting their new registration to their existing identity by asking them to provide their original name and code.  After that, they will have normal privileges for their organization.

A user can register with any valid email address

Now when you go to register for Paratext, you begin by entering your email address.  If your email is known to the system as a Google account, a Google authentication window will pop up. If not, you will be given the option not to use a Google account as in the image below.

 

If you choose not to use Google, you will create a password for your new account and must wait for a verification email to be sent. Once you open the email link, your account will be verified, and you will have a temporary code.  This code will enable Paratext to work on the Basic Tier until you are approved in your role in an organization.

We are excited that there are no more barriers to user registration in Paratext.  This is very important in keeping Paratext available for all!