Srila Prabhupada's Audio to Text Fidelity Project

BY: VISNU MURTI DASA

Apr 19, 2014 — RADHADESH, BELGIUM (SUN) — Vanipedia happily announces to everyone that the Srila Prabhupada's Audio to Text Fidelity Project created to proofread all the lectures & conversations of Srila Prabhupada is now launched. Already there are three devotees (Rishab, Uma and Surya) involved, and now we are ready to engage more proofreaders.

Actually from 1966 to 1977 there are only 890 recorded lectures & 947 recorded conversations so it is not that much to go through - approximately 1500 hours of real time listening - so adding on the time it takes for the proofreader to make corrections and then the correcting in Vanisource we estimate a maximum of 4,000 hours of vaniseva.

Here are some variables of the time frame that we could have them finished by;

100 devotees performing an average of only 5 hours of vaniseva a week could complete them in 8 weeks.

50 devotees performing an average of only 5 hours of vaniseva a week could complete them in 16 weeks.

20 devotees performing an average of only 5 hours of vaniseva a week could complete them in 40 weeks.

10 devotees performing an average of only 5 hours of vaniseva a week could complete them in 80 weeks.

If 10 to 100 devotees can offer only 5 hours a week of attentively hearing and offering service to Srila Prabhupada's divine audio instructions then, what has been waiting for decades to be done, can now be completed in only 8 to 80 weeks. Just see the power of collaboration. This is why I love collaborating. It is so ecstatic to perform services in this way. Together we can create clean polished pearls of Srila Prabhupada's words in text form.

This final checking of Srila Prabhupada's audio is now possible as the Bhaktivedanta Archives have started to release the full unedited audio files (1976 & 1977 are available and 1975 & 1974 are planned this year) and Vanipedia is now taking up the service of proofreading the text. We can only hope that we will be able to finish them all timely.

Once we have checked all of the lectures and conversations we will have;

1) A very transparent presentation of Srila Prabhupada's audio teachings in text form.

2) The texts ready for printing in hard copy. - Starting in 1988 and going up to 1993 the first edition of all of Srila Prabhupada's lectures & conversations totaling 37 softbound books and 25 hardbound books were printed in hard copy. These books are now out of print and since they were printed more audio has been found, thus with the extra audio and a better fidelity check we can be all transcendentally happy to see them once again come back into print in the not too distant future.

3) The texts ready for translating in multi-languages.

All that is required to get involved is; some desire, a little time, Microsoft Word and a very attentive ear. Basically you will be listening to a lecture of Srila Prabhupada while reading the text, and correcting any mistakes you see. Microsoft Word has an excellent feature to track all the changes made to a document, so when you send us the file we can see exactly what changes you have made, verify them by listening ourselves, and then update our Vanisource pages with the corrections.

We are starting first with lectures from 1976. The following Google spreadsheet will be used to manage the project. It has the links to the lectures we want to proofread, and it is here we will track the progress of each lecture.

Text-to-Audio-Fidelity

If you are interested to participate please email Rishab - rishi.nz.108@gmail.com who is starting off as the first coordinator of this project. He will help you get up and running and supply you with a list of TO DOs.

If this project can take off as successfully as the Uniting Srila Prabhupada's Mulit-lingual Family project then we can be rest assured that these audio files will be proofread very quickly.

Please share this message liberally to whomever you consider could be interested.