Greg | 14 October 2022

Release Announcement – October 2022

Audio Project Manager (APM) is the next generation Bible translation tool for those implementing an oral strategy in their Bible translation project. APM serves as a bridge between high-quality tools like Paratext and Render, providing teams the flexibility to utilize the strengths of each tool in a way that serves them best.

Audio Project Manager began as SIL Transcriber allowing Render projects to be transcribed for teams wanting to work further on an oral project in a written form. As users began to use the product, they were trying to use it to more flexibly manage oral projects and oral drafting. Through input from the user community, the program has migrated and broadened its scope. Collaborative meetings with partners resulted in a flexible tool that is managed on the field level permitting a very church centered project management solution.

Audio Project Manager helps with managing files for personal or collaborative team projects. Projects can be Scripture content or more general content. Each team can customize a workflow for their projects including steps like internalization, recording, team review, peer review, community checking, whole and phrase back translations, consultant review, transcription of the vernacular or the back translations, synching content into a Paratext project, and or exporting the content for use in other applications.

Audio Project Manager projects are organized into passages which can be hierarchically grouped into larger sections. Each passage in a section progresses through the workflow. During the review process (e.g. peer review, consultant review), a portion of the audio can be highlighted and threaded discussions, with oral or text comments, can be created allowing back and forth comments between team members and/or consultants who are not co-located.

Audio Project Manager works as a web app on any device connected to the Internet keeping the team content updated and backed up in the cloud. It also supports offline users through Windows, Mac or Linux applications where the content can be synced to other cloud-based team members when the Internet becomes available. All the team content can be exported and stored in a single file if desired.

Web site: https://www.audioprojectmanager.org

App: https://app.audioprojectmanager.org

Improvements in Audio Project Manager since our last version of SIL Transcriber.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are currently using SIL Transcriber offline and you want to work with your data in Audio Project Manager offline, you will need to export your data to a PTF from the SIL Transcriber and then import this PTF into the new Audio Project Manager program. Because the name of the program has changed, the data doesn’t automatically move from one program to the other.

• We created a new concept called a Peer Group which is defined in the Members dialog. This is especially helpful for reviews. By assigning a discussion on a passage to a Peer Group, members of the group will see that it is their turn to review it. This replaces the idea of assigning a discussion to a role. Groups are more powerful than roles because a person can be a member of multiple groups. The groups could be named by roles but some language programs break into teams: Group A and Group B for example where Group B does the peer review of Group A’s work and Group A does the peer review of Group B’s work. So the avatar on the discussion card can be clicked to quickly and easily reassign the discussion to another person or group. In some cases, commenting can actually automatically assign the discussion back to someone to respond.
• For discussions, we now support Consultants-in-training (CIT) working with a mentor. Each of these are treated as Peer Groups. The CIT comments are visible only to the mentor until s/he approves them to be seen by the rest of the team. Mentor comments are only visible to the CIT.
  We added the ability to save the discussion filters so they can be used by others on the team.
• If a particular segment is being discussed and a new version of the audio is recorded, the segment being discussed can be updated to a segment of the new version without losing the segment of the previous version. The previous version has a play button added as a comment in the discussion thread.
  When Syncing to Paratext for one passage, only that passage is synched. The program automatically advances to the next step when the sync is complete.
• We added the ability to have transcription steps for Whole Back Translations, Phrase Back Translations, Questions and Answers, and Retellings. In addition Paratext Sync steps can be created for Whole Back Translations and for Phrase back translations. If both of these are transcribed, it is recommended that they be synced to separate Paratext Back Translation projects.
• When creating resources for internalization, it is possible to upload a resource that covers multiple sections and passages and link the part of this more general resource to the passages and sections it applies to in a chunking tool.
• A workflow template has been created for Render users who would like to use Audio Project Manager to get their content into Paratext. It includes steps for transcribing and syncing vernacular text and both whole and phrase back translations.
• The program will remember which row was being worked on in the Audio Project data sheet. This will help team members working on large project plans with many passages.
• We improved the editing of the data sheet. Adding Sections and Passages buttons now give a menu with multiple options. These options have always been available by right clicking but now they are available on the menu too. Passages can also be moved to previous or following sections.
• We added ways to export the audio and the transcriptions of back translations, questions and answers and retellings in addition to the vernacular content.
• We added a localization for Spanish speakers
• We have added the ability to track the Intellectual Property holder who is recording or has recorded the audio.