Swifter quality translations with TaBiThA 

By Deb Fox | Wycliffe Today Autumn 2025 |

The name Tabitha means ‘gazelle’ in Aramaic: an animal that is swift and gracious – just like the translation software program bearing its name. The Bible Translator’s Assistant or TaBiThA (originally referred to as TBTA) is being prepared for use throughout the world to provide help with Bible translations into new languages. 

David Duncan has been leading the development of this technology since he and his wife, Neva, first joined Wycliffe Canada in 1996. David passed through our National Centre on his way to train software developers in the Philippines and Indonesia in the use of TaBiThA to help translate marginalised languages in their regions. He shares about the program and the opportunities it provides to accelerate Bible translation projects.

What does your role involve? 

I work with Wycliffe Canada, in a subdivision they started called Prescience Labs. I’ve been involved with ‘computer assisted translation’ software. Aside from developing the tools for TaBiThA, I love that I get to work alongside minority language speakers and train them on how to use the software.

Why was TaBiThA developed?

A traditional translation of the New Testament can take more than 10 years to complete, and a full Bible at least twice that time. This can seem like an overwhelming task to minority language speakers. The design philosophy of TaBiThA is to provide accurate, clear and simple meaning in the target language. TaBiThA is not recommended as a draft, but as a language reference to be used along with other tools. Trials have shown that this first language resource can increase both quality and speed of translation.

How does it work?

Most computer assisted translation software uses words and patterns to ‘learn’ a language in order to create a translation draft. TaBiThA, on the other hand, does not need to have any translation work previously done. A linguist sits down with a mother- tongue speaker to translate around 300 statements into the target language. The software is then fed the data and it develops a set of rules that go with the language. After a year and a half using TaBiThA, you can translate about 7 or 8 books of the Bible and train the system with enough data that it can then produce Scripture and translation aids for any book of the Bible in the target language. 

What are you doing with cluster language projects?

Once the first language in a language family has been analysed, it is a much quicker process to adjust it to related ‘cluster’ languages. Our first trial began with One Book and Translators Association of the Philippines (TAP). There is a cluster project starting in the Philippines for 2 languages covering 750,000 people. We want to get informed consent and buy-in from community leaders before teaching national translators how to translate the Bible with the help of new translation tools.

I also met with church leaders in Jakarta to discuss ways of reaching Indonesians without a Bible in their languages. We are partnering with Kartidaya (the local Bible translation organisation in Indonesia) to build the first grammar system in TaBiThA for Bahasa Indonesia. It is wonderful to not only be working with global organisations but to work in a multi-organisational collaboration, including Pioneer Bible Translators, SIL Global and other Wycliffe Global Alliance groups. It is so exciting to see what can be done through technology to help share God’s Word!

Please pray for:

• more people to join the team 
• solutions to issues facing Indonesian translations
• Wycliffe New Zealand member Matthew Bayliss as he works on the grammar for a Malaysian language while his wife is sick.