August 2026

Executive summary

August opened with the pipeline's biggest single-week jump yet, 19 more languages reaching a complete New Testament (38 to 57) and three brand-new languages onboarded (Afar, Amharic, Oromo), alongside a full guided project workflow and a Translator Worker API foundation for Translation Studio. The second week changed direction from generating content to settling it: Library Review shipped end to end, giving volunteers a way to resolve contested doctrine terminology, backed by an offline pipeline that merges per-book output into one canonical registry per language. The third week changed direction again, from settling content to helping people use it: a Help section launched, the newsletter and feedback widget moved off Google Sheets into Postgres with a real unsubscribe, and admin gained Partners, Feedback, and Newsletter tabs. The fourth week was the quietest of the month: four commits landed Monday morning (the Translation Studio under-construction notice removed, the partner/volunteer FAQ pages folded into Help, two more Help articles, and an eighth Translation Skill), then nothing shipped the remaining six days. Content generation has now been flat for three straight weeks running.

What's new

• Change

  19 more languages reached a complete New Testament in the month's first week, led by Odia, Sanskrit, Telugu, and Kannada. The total jumped from 38 to 57 languages.

  Impact

  Book pages live in the Library grew from 1,441 to 1,938 in a single week.

  Next action

  Route this month's new Critical- and High-risk doctrine flags to reviewers.

• Change

  Shipped Library Review end to end, with a volunteer reviewer interface, weighted voting, invitations, and an admin promote step.

  Impact

  Contested doctrine terminology can now be settled by speakers of the language rather than left pending.

  Next action

  Name the first volunteer reviewers for German and Spanish.

• Change

  Built the offline merge pipeline behind review: a conflict analyzer, per-language normalization rules, a canonical merge step, and a promote step.

  Impact

  Knowledge from every loaded Bible book now merges into one requirements package per language.

  Next action

  Promote German once its 78 pending decisions are settled.

• Change

  Onboarded four brand-new languages this month: Afar, Amharic, Oromo, and Twi, after fixing a bootstrap gap that had blocked new starts.

  Impact

  The Library now covers 67 languages, up from 63 at July's close.

  Next action

  Publish the remaining eight Twi books to the Library.

• Change

  Shipped a guided Step 1/2/3 Translation Studio workflow, reusable source documents, a 9-phase lifecycle display, private per-project storage, and a Translator Worker API foundation.

  Impact

  Translation Studio can now run a project end to end, including unattended by an external worker process.

  Next action

  Onboard a first real partner workspace and connect a first external worker.

• Change

  Corrected every language package that described itself as covering only Romans, across 62 languages.

  Impact

  The Library no longer understates its own coverage to partners reading a package.

  Next action

  Confirm the corrected framing reads correctly in a published bundle.

• Change

  Shipped a Help section: eight articles across Library review, Library features, Methodology, and Translation Studio, replacing an auto-opening onboarding popup.

  Impact

  Volunteers and partners now have a written guide instead of needing someone to explain the product live each time.

  Next action

  Watch which articles get used and which questions still reach a person instead.

• Change

  Moved the newsletter and on-site feedback widget off Google Sheets into Postgres, adding a real unsubscribe and Feedback, Newsletter, and Partners tabs in admin.

  Impact

  An unsubscribe can finally be honoured, and leads and feedback are visible in admin instead of locked in a spreadsheet.

  Next action

  Decide whether sheet-era newsletter addresses, which carry no unsubscribe token, are ever imported.

• Change

  Fixed /world-languages, which had bypassed the site's tracking script since launch and recorded zero visits despite being the homepage's primary call to action.

  Impact

  The site's main conversion path is measurable for the first time.

  Next action

  Check Plausible numbers to confirm traffic is now recording.

• Change

  Removed the Translation Studio under-construction notice after its 15 August target passed, and retired the standalone partner/volunteer FAQ pages into a new Help FAQs section with redirects.

  Impact

  Visitors see Translation Studio as finished, and partner/volunteer questions live alongside every other Help answer.

  Next action

  Scope the AI-driven chat redesign the removed notice was standing in for; it remains unaddressed.

• Change

  Shipped pre-translation-analysis, an eighth Translation Skill that scans a source document for translation-blocking issues before translation starts.

  Impact

  Acronyms, uncited Scripture quotes, and idioms get caught before translation instead of mid-process or in back-translation review.

  Next action

  Run it against a real document end to end to confirm the catch rate justifies the added step.

Business impact

Month-to-date has pushed New Testament coverage from 38 to 57 languages and added the infrastructure Translation Studio needs to run a real translation project end to end. The review-capacity gap these reports have flagged since June now has a working tool behind it, with 203 terminology decisions queued across German and Spanish and still waiting on named volunteers three weeks later. Volunteers and partners now have a written guide instead of a live explanation each time, and partner/volunteer leads trigger an email alert instead of sitting unseen in a spreadsheet. Partner and volunteer FAQs now live inside Help instead of on two separate marketing pages, and every future translation run gets a pre-flight check for translation-blocking issues before it starts.

Metrics

• Registry decisions awaiting a reviewer

  203(was 0) ▲ Up from last period

  German 78, Spanish 125. Newly measurable in August; unchanged since, still no named reviewer three weeks running.

• Languages with a complete New Testament, month-to-date

  57(was 38) ▲ Up from last period

• Languages with a complete Old Testament

  10(was 10) → No change from last period

• Book pages live in the Library

  1,939(was 1,441) ▲ Up from last period

• Languages with a published Library bundle

  67(was 63) ▲ Up from last period

• Help articles published

  12(was 0) ▲ Up from last period

  Launched in the third week (7 articles), five more added in the fourth.

• Translation Skills in the downloadable bundle

  8(was 7) ▲ Up from last period

  Pre-translation-analysis, added in the fourth week, is the eighth.

Risks

Every week of August through mid-month included a deploy-time database incident, a run that reached four consecutive weeks before the week of 16 August became the first without one, after two migrations were validated against a real database before shipping. Doctrine-flag review capacity still has no named people three weeks after the review tool shipped, and a deploy size ceiling limits review to three languages at a time. The 15 August Translation Studio completion target named in the site's own under-construction banner passed with the banner still live for a week, then the banner itself was removed in week four without the roadmap behind it (an AI-driven chat redesign) being scoped, so the underlying gap remains even though its visible symptom is gone. Content generation has now paused for three consecutive weeks, and the fourth week's six-day work stoppage is a sharper drop-off than the prior two weeks' pattern of engineering simply going elsewhere.

Decisions needed

Leadership: name the first volunteer reviewers, now unresolved for three weeks against 203 queued decisions, and decide which language joins German and Spanish under the three-language ceiling. Scope the AI-driven chat redesign the removed under-construction notice was standing in for. Decide whether content generation resumes before month close, and confirm whether week four's near-total stoppage was a deliberate pause or an unplanned stall.

Next Month

• Name the first volunteer reviewers, unresolved for three weeks, and start clearing the 203-decision queue
• Onboard a first real partner workspace onto Translation Studio and connect a first external worker
• Scope the AI-driven chat redesign the removed under-construction notice was standing in for
• Make idempotent migrations a merge requirement, building on the mid-month incident-free week
• Decide whether content generation resumes after three flat weeks, and confirm week four's stoppage was deliberate

Key dates

No key dates recorded for this period.