Stuff that is time-consuming but important. Some of this we do and some we don’t have enough time to do.
- Automatically add furigana to a document. When I was teaching kids class I’d often want to give them a segment of text from the Bible to work with. They always need furigana so I have to add it. I’m thinking about writing a tool to do this myself.
- Bibles. Would love to have a top-quality leather Bible option. Or whatever the equivalent is here for a book you expect to use a lot. Would also love to have a cheap, full-length Bible (NT-only exists but not the whole thing).
- More accessible Bible translation. Would love to have a version translated from the Heb/Grk that a high school graduate could pick up and read easily. Widely-used version has too many rare words and odd turns of phrase. Also I have some questions about the use of formal language.
- Publicly available Bible commentaries. ALTHOUGH now that I think about it, LLMs could help a lot here because they can search through the available English-language stuff and explain it in Japanese.
- Theologically helpful, emotionally evocative, and intellectually profound worship music. (Translating from English is something we do from time to time but it is challenging because intonation patterns and syllable counts are often very different.) Bonus points if it reflects local aesthetics a bit but honestly that’s not even important yet if first three points are hit.
- High-quality illustrations and diagrams of people/things that come up in the Bible, backed by best available research. This comes up for me especially when trying to help kids understand the Bible (I end up drawing on the whiteboard or a piece of scrap paper a lot) but even adults tend to find it helpful. Even something like a 図鑑 would be good.
- Sub-point. Angels like Gabriel shouldn’t be depicted with wings. Mary more than likely wasn’t nine months pregnant when she made the trip to Bethlehem. (Also uncertain if they had enough money for a pack animal.) People who spent a lot of time in the Mediterranean sun probably weren’t super-pale. Et cetera.
- A Making Sense of God equivalent. Something that opens the discussion.
- [will add more later]
Ben Shimomura 