What is the NRSI? 
 

The Non-Roman Script Initiative (NRSI) is a Wycliffe-family organizational subgroup which does the software engineering to enable today's computers to handle "non-Roman" writing systems (scripts).  "Roman" writing systems are similar to English and European languages.  Examples of "non-Roman" writing systems are Hebrew, Arabic, Thai and Mongolian, whose alphabets consist of characters which stack, change shape or morph into different shapes depending on their usage in text.

The digital versions of some non-Roman scripts, such as Hebrew and Arabic, were created by Microsoft, Apple and others because a sizeable paying market existed for computers in those language groups.  The people groups still without the Bible were (and still are) too small and too poor to interest today's primary computing vendors.  Even if these peoples were all given brand-new Dell laptops, those new machines would still be incapable of properly rendering their languages without the specialized programming that simply hasn't been done yet for their complex writing systems.

There are more than 2250 language-groups in the world today which still do not have a single syllable of the Word of God (see the Wycliffe Vision 2025).  600 of these groups not only do not have any part of the Bible, but they also write their language (or if yet unwritten will require the use of) an unautomated writing system.  Bible translation is very inefficient today, if not nearly impossible, for a language whose writing system is still foreign to a computer.  Ken's role within the NRSI is focused on doing the art and engineering required to get all human languages into the digital age and, consequently, get the Scriptures translated for all humans.

The ScriptSource Project 

Ken's involvement is related to the ScriptSource Community website.  This site exists in only prototypal form at the moment, but the goal for this website is to be something of a networking forum for all the world's digital writing system developers, both Christian and non-Christian.  Writing system developers are a fairly small group of highly specialized experts with rare skill-sets, and their collaboration is essential if the problems of computerizing all the non-Roman scripts are to be solved anytime soon.  Anyone who does this kind of software development needs tools, technical knowledge and consultation, and even people who do not share our translation goals provide things which will expedite our work for the Bibleless.  Likewise, the products that the NRSI produces has much to offer secular organizations (relief organizations, international health groups, etc).  This is like an airline which doesn't share our goal of Bible translation, but both of us profit from our involvement together.

Ken's specific project work will be to help build the actual collaboration website (called ScriptSource) which will hold all the data needed and posted by these collaborators.  ScriptSource will function in a manner similar to the Wikipedia website, an on-line global encyclopedia, where hundreds of contributors supply and maintain information about their own areas of expertise.  The ScriptSource site will actually be a very complex database engine which will hold information about

• languages,
• their scripts,
• the technical features of those scripts
• the existing fonts, keyboard layouts and documentation for those scripts
• the tools and files to install those scripts on computers, available for download.

Ken will help implement the database, design the site's data-management pages (which the site's users will see) and develop the features of the underlying content management system which actually builds the pages seen by users.

A prototyped page has been hand-coded by Victor Gaultney (an NRSI script designer) to provide an idea of what a typical ScriptSource page might look like.

How It All Works 

When the NRSI develops a new digital writing system, all kinds of data about it will be posted on the ScriptSource site.  When the NRSI develops a new software tool to automate some aspect of building non-Roman writing systems, those tools will be posted on the ScriptSource site.  Anyone in the world may then freely download a specific writing-system file package or a tool (see the Graphite example from the NRSI's own website) to develop those files for a specific language.

Similarly, anyone anywhere who does the long, difficult work of building the exceedingly complex digital glyphs, fonts and rules to "computerize" a specific language (for their own purposes) may post the new products at the ScriptSource website.  Once created, these files can be downloaded and used by anyone else, including those of us working in Bible translation.

The net goal of the ScriptSource Community and ScriptSource websites is to greatly multiply the number of people enabled to automate the complex writing systems of the world.  Beyond the material benefits of moving these minority languages into the 21st century, the implication for Bible translation is staggering.  The NRSI's twenty staffers, working alone, will need decades to be able to build all the complex writing systems that will be needed by the 600 language-groups whose Bibles will have to be produced in complex scripts.  We believe that the ScriptSource-based collaboration strategy will help get that work done in far less time, thus getting the Word of God delivered much sooner.