MCALPINE, Eleanor

“. . . Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Heb. 12:1 NIV).
Many years ago, while working as a secretary for a life insurance company in Hamilton, Ont., Eleanor was looking for work with more eternal value.  That’s when she heard Billy Graham on a Christian radio station, announcing the needs of Wycliffe Bible Translators. This resulted in her joining Wycliffe in August of 1967. In a preliminary assignment she typed a New Testament in Flagstaff, Ariz., then participated in Jungle Camp (survival training) in Mexico (1967/68), and spent the summer of 1968 serving at the North Dakota training school operated by SIL, Wycliffe’s key partner organization.

Following this, Eleanor worked as a secretary for the international translation co-ordinator in Mexico and in Dallas, Texas. There, she also edited and typed articles for journals and typed the various drafts for books.

She then served in India and Nepal. Initially she was secretary to the director for the school for training Indian translators, and she then keyboarded and edited materials, reorganized libraries, and did various projects to aid translators—both individual teams and in general—in their work.

Since the beginning of June 2004, Eleanor has been back in Burlington, Ont., on remote assignment, doing projects for work in India, Nepal and occasionally elsewhere, most recently Asia. Currently, she is editing materials for fellow members and Indian colleagues, varying from relatively short documents to journals, theses, dissertations and books. She is also keyboarding glossaries and New Testaments in other scripts, and helping translation teams by compiling and typing information into a more helpful form.

Her work accelerates translation programs by saving translators and others time keying in materials, doing research, and/or accessing needed information in an easy-to-use form. Her editing saves time for translation teams (especially those whose mother tongue is not English) because it means they will not have to go over and over drafts of papers and reports. It also helps ensure a clear, accurate and easy-to-read final product.