Last week at the Utah Open Source Conference, Tom Welch, Technology Community Manager for the Church, spoke about his work as CTO of Linspire. While at Linspire, they created a tool called IRMA, by which volunteers could participate in the translation of their software. For example, a volunteer with a few minutes on her hands might visit IRMA to translate text like “Your file was not found” into Spanish, Arabic, or Swahili. The IRMA project resulted in the full or partial translation of their software into 59 languages. Instead of paying for the work, the company was able to harness the collective intelligence of the community to get the work done:
59 languages- 3,246 translators
- 2.6 million translations
- top translator completed over 13,800 message translations
This is precisely the type of project that would be interesting for sharing the Gospel. The Church member might visit a website and be presented with a few options:
- Will you please translate the phrase “Joseph Smith is a prophet of God” into Portuguese?
- Will you please write a paragraph about what it’s like to visit a Mormon temple?
- Someone at Yahoo Answers has a question about the Book of Mormon. Please follow this link to answer his question.
- Will you please hit record and look into your web cam as you explain how you gained a testimony of the principle of tithing?
The work produced by volunteers would be published where persons of other faiths could find it. The site would have to be as accessible and easy to use as FamilySearchIndexing.org. There would be plenty of work, and this would make sharing the Gospel easier for Church members.
