Xenizo works regularly with the Open Components Ecosystem (OCE), a collaborative project that encourages individuals and organisations to produce software in the Bible tech space that may be reused by others. Our most-used contribution is Proskomma, a library that manages Bible content in web applications.
Once a year, OCE organises a hackathon. In 2023 we hosted a team in Avignon. This year we accepted an invitation from Lars Gunnarsson of unfoldingWord to work with him in Thun, Switzerland. So, early on Monday 4th March, Gabriel, Léo, Mark, Nicolas and Quentin squeezed into Mark’s tiny car and headed for the mountains.
Lars is a great host, and we found time to sample some Swiss culture during our week in Thun. We had a few days of snow, but were still able to reach our hotel in the mountains.
Our team decided to create a “juxtaligner” during the week. Briefly, the idea was to be able to manually align a Bible translation in French or another language, back to the source Greek or Hebrew, without needing to actually read Greek or Hebrew. We were able to get this working in time for the hackathon show-and-tell which featured many other projects including AI-generated films and audio Bible editing software.
Joshua Lansford joined us, virtually, from the States. He ran some experiments on AI juxtalinear translation which were unexpectedly promising. We also met with two Iranians involved in CCBT, and with the director of Wycliffe Switzerland. This is one of the aims of hackathons – to give developers time to explore new ideas with others, outside of their normal work.
The week was quite tiring, but we were pleased with what we managed to create, and also appreciated the opportunity to spend time together as a team. We’re looking forward to the next hackathon in 2025!
