Greg | 10 May 2023

Release Announcement – May 2023

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 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, term review, peer review, community checking, whole and phrase back translations, consultant review, transcription of the vernacular or the back translations, syncing 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.

  • Changes for handling larger projects

  • Shared resources are easier to search and can be attached to passages or sections

  • Filters are available for the Audio Project Manager sheet. This helps users focus on current work

  • The compare tool now remembers what was last compared.

  • The whole back translation tool requires working with the whole and doesn’t allow partial work.

  • General resources can be added with a single step

  • Discussions and their first comment are added as a single step

  • A new set of four oral Bible translation work flows have been added.

  • When passages are pulled from Paratext the verse sorting is fixed

  • Improvements made to templates make it easier to import Render content for transcription

  • Some support features added like the ability to copy a project

We added a term verify tool that allows Scripture translation terms to be tracked.

Another big part of this release was a technology upgrade to the latest technology tools.

Here A detailed list of changes made for this release