by Bengt de Paulis
I started in March 2008.
It was a very gentle start by IngMarie, Sweden’s national leader,
asking if I could translate some of the CSG content.
It was Elke, older Swedish sister who had hinted I might be able to take some of the load.
I started with No 10 without knowing the content.
After finishing that in about 2 months, I started with No 9 and after that the No 11.
My feelings sitting in our home in Finland, in the spring of 2008, in the kitchen and sometimes outside in the garden when the weather permitted, was very nice and inspiring.
Spring, birds singing and nesting…life was a joy.
I wanted to do this translation as close to 100% professionally I could,
so I asked IngMarie if they had any translation Software in Sweden.
They had since long time bought Systran Translation software, which was not in use and expensive.
I asked to use it and was provided a valid copy and license.
English to Swedish machine translation with a human touch. 🙂
After testing it I found it to be quite rough in the translation results.
It needed lots of manual corrections afterwards.
The best use of it for me was to add new own preferred translation word-list, and be able to use consistency in the automatic translation choices.
Spiritual experiences: A general good feeling doing this spiritual work.
After asking IngMarie for payment, since I was now doing this full time, she replied the rule was, if I wanted full payment I should go to Korea and translate.
She thought though the time was over for that way.
Any way she contacted the Project leader Rev. Chang in Korea.
He said OK but come quickly, quickly…
Now I had one serious headache to care of first.
I owned a house in Sweden, since 1998, after my father died.
We lived there between 1996 until 2000, when I moved to Finland,
and started my work in Nokia Telecommunications, a let the house be open for renting.
So I had to sell the house since we could not rent it out any more. Renovation needed.
I went there with my daughter Laila, we cleaned painted…and on my
wife’s inspiration  (hmm… spirit world) we put an internet add of the house for sale.
We quickly got responses.
One lady from Gothenburg was willing to buy almost immediately.
She was selling her old house in the 2nd biggest town in Sweden Gothenburg.
To come to romantic countryside, where house prices was a fraction of expensive city prices.
That was a bargain for her she felt. 🙂
Any way this was a key solution for us that we quickly could be relived from the headache of taking care of a house in another country from Finland.
After that trip to Sweden I was free and ready to come to Korea, arriving in the beginning of July 2008.
Hot, hot Korea +33degr C.
Raymond picked me up on the Walker Hilton Hotel, were the airport bus left us off.
What a difference to the quite cool Finland and Sweden, around +20.
I received a warm welcome from Fred from Indonesia, Aigerim and Karlygash two sisters from Kazakhstan.
Samir and Sarita from Nepal, and some weeks later Raj Kumar from India, my age.
Immediately they wanted to know who I was, and I gave my short version life story. Some 20 mins. And I found me as one of the team.
Rev. Chang took us out the first evening for a restaurant meal.
This started great.
Birthday Party for sister Aigerim from Kazakhstan.
Scary…, one night a couple of weeks later, I woke up with an ugly face staring at me centimeters from my eyes.
That’s the only nightmare I’ve had here. A bad one!
There were also other not so nice things happening in thee first months, …let me not bring them up here…just to mentioning living, working, sleeping together in such a close environment puts a lot of strain on patience and humility for each other.
In the end we all survived…as great friends.
One of the very best experiences was how flexible the use of Internet was.
In the beginning I had my oldest daughter Laila helping me editing.
With her on internet skype all the time in my earphones, she could type (chat)
or ask a question, any time.
Often we were connected 6-7 hours.
A fortune with normal phoneline Korea-Finland 🙂
Thank you Mr./Mrs. Internet 🙂
Later in November when Dan Gillberg, Swedish brother joined full time editing translating
and coordinating the work in Sweden, we again experienced the flexibility of Internet and chatting.
Time difference – 8 hrs from Korean local time, meant that when I was sleeping he was working
and when he was sleeping I was working.
Still in the overlapping few hours we could exchange the most important questions and discussions regarding translation of phrases and words.
If one of us were offline, we still could post questions/reports/answers in the chat window
and as soon as the other came online he saw the offline responses.
Thank you again Mr./Mrs. Internet.
Not to say the value of keeping Julian Grays latest updates online on the Swedish web pages.
That meant no need for emailing attachment.
I could do any updates in just one place, and everyone had the access immediately!
Without the net I would say this project would almost be impossible.
At least to run across Korea and Sweden.
Also valuable for me being 6 months away from my family,
was my almost daily no cost phone contacts, and sometimes also web-camera contacts.
Every weekend I posted a Korean Report with pictures to all members in Sweden/Finland.
Overall one of my Greatest UC Project experiences.
/Bengt de Paulis
2 Jan 2009
Guri Korea