second Miracle: the codes
When I first began to translate verbs, I soon became bogged down. The realization was beginning to gnaw at me that I could not keep going at the same rate, translating each verb occurrence individually. This obstacle loomed like a cliff in front of me. Here are my thoughts from my journal and what happened.
"2007, Nov 9 Friday - So tedious doing all these verb forms. I was getting discouraged, thinking I would never finish before dying or becoming incapable. I sent out a prayer and asked the Lord if there was some way I could improve or streamline the process. I just felt like I was missing something."
3 days later --
"2007, Nov 12 Monday - So I was lying in bed and just becoming conscious when I began to think about the translation work. An idea came into my mind, indistinctly but quickly gaining form. Of course! That would work, I think! It was so complicated though. But if it worked at the same rate of time I am devoting to it now, it would probably save me, and I don’t think I am over-estimating, about ten years worth of work. I couldn’t believe this was happening. As I got out paper and pen and began to map the process, I kept in mind that although an intensive initial outlay of work was required, it would save so much more!
I spent much of the day preparing the lists, numbers, and categories. If it worked, this process might actually make it possible to finish!"
"2007, Nov 9 Friday - So tedious doing all these verb forms. I was getting discouraged, thinking I would never finish before dying or becoming incapable. I sent out a prayer and asked the Lord if there was some way I could improve or streamline the process. I just felt like I was missing something."
3 days later --
"2007, Nov 12 Monday - So I was lying in bed and just becoming conscious when I began to think about the translation work. An idea came into my mind, indistinctly but quickly gaining form. Of course! That would work, I think! It was so complicated though. But if it worked at the same rate of time I am devoting to it now, it would probably save me, and I don’t think I am over-estimating, about ten years worth of work. I couldn’t believe this was happening. As I got out paper and pen and began to map the process, I kept in mind that although an intensive initial outlay of work was required, it would save so much more!
I spent much of the day preparing the lists, numbers, and categories. If it worked, this process might actually make it possible to finish!"
"2007, Nov 13 Tuesday - I started doing the new process and it was going so smoothly and easily and I was getting the important verb info into the text in final form, that I literally made roughly, let’s see, I kept track...1,932 verb form changes, give or take a few. I love global search and replace! Before this process, I was starting to loathe the verb translating, tempted to first translate all the nouns and avoid the verbs. Now, doing global search and replace functions on each possible TVM combination separately, replacing with the translated auxiliary forms (which are the same across many different TVM numbers), I can, when I come to a Strong's number with many occurrences in the text, translate all of the occurrences of the same verb form at the click of a few buttons. Amazing."
Now, if your interest is piqued you might want to go back and read the details at 4. Accurate and Consistent