languages archives

A Pipe into a Well of Pure Waters

Today in a large team meeting, one of the presenters read the following quote from the October 2008 issue of the Church’s international magazine, The Liahona:

”A Pipe Into a Well of Pure Water”
I am deeply grateful for the great work you have done with LDS.org. Permission to own and access Church materials is extremely limited in our area. Having access to the scriptures and Church materials over the Internet is like having our own pipe into a well of pure waters. Please know that your efforts make a very real difference in the daily lives of our members. What a miracle it is for them to have our Heavenly Father’s message in their own languages.
~Name withheld

This made a couple of deep impressions on me. First, it made me very grateful to live in an area where “permission to own and access” religious materials is not limited, and where my name does not have to be witheld for expressing my beliefs.

Second, it drove home the importance of our internationalization efforts, to bring our message “to every kindred, tongue, and people.”

Lastly, while our group has on occasion talked about being “temple builders” of a sort—creating sacred spaces where people can reflect, or be inspired, or do a good work—I hadn’t ever considered myself a plumber. But what could be a nobler vocation than building “a pipe into a well of pure waters” so that the spiritually thirsty can drink?

posted by ted on Tuesday, Jan 13, 2009 · 2 comments

LDS Maps is now live in 16 languages! The site should detect the browser language automatically, or if you want to poke around, there is a language selector at the bottom of the screen. Most of the work for this minor release was on the dev and translation teams, but props are due to Aaron Barker for helping define a new standard for language selection and Rob Foster for the soon-to-be-universal (?) language icon.

Update: Larry Richman provides some additional info about the release, including how to link to a specific language-version of the site.

posted by ted on Monday, Dec 22, 2008 · 11 comments

Another great use of the video player designed by Chris and company: the annual First Presidency Christmas Devotional.

Designerly things to note: loved the opening shots of the lights on Temple Square; not in love with the title text, but oh well; and loved the family room “set” behind the podium, though the flickering fireplace got a little distracting at times. Finally, note that the broadcast site offers audio in 29 languages, and video in 4 languages. The Church’s committment to the international audience is nowhere more apparent than in its broadcasting efforts…

A nod to accessibility as well—if you’ve never watched anything in sign language before, check out the ASL version, through at least the first Mormon Tabernacle Choir number (“Once in Royal David’s City,” which incidentally was written by a member of the Church). I love watching musical performances in ASL

posted by ted on Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008 · 5 comments

General Conference Online

Tomorrow, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will gather and listen to President Hinckley and other general authorities of the Church. Like Ted said, it is quite a miracle to have a broadcast with over 60 languages. I was a translator for many years and to see all these people from around the world translating the words of the Prophets in their tongue is awe inspiring.

If you have a Mac, the streaming audio from the above link is not going to work unless you have this (free) plugin from Microsoft called Flip4Mac, which lets you play Windows Media files in your Quicktime player. I’ve downloaded it and tested it so I know it works :)

Alternatively, you can watch General Conference online from BYU.tv. This is actually how I watch it last time and it was great.

posted by gilbert on Friday, Mar 30, 2007