Iāve been very lucky to get the chance to volunteer on the SuttaCentral project over the last year. I know that a lot of work can go unnoticed so I have also tried to create threads announcing new additions to the project. But I thought it might be nice to have a thread where people can share and rejoice in the merit that has been collected over the last year.
If you know about work that someone did, please post it so we can rejoice. If you collected merit through the project, please post it and invite us to rejoice and practice mudita.
I also want to rejoice in the merit of all the folks who reported typos etc on the site in the mistakes thread.
There are too many to mention by name in one post, but as usual the top contributor to that thread by a wide margin was Ven. @Sabbamitta who interrupts her translation work to post anything she sees. Also Ven. @Niyyanika, @666tomanderson, @sood, @Vaddha, @Danny, @Gabriel_L and so many more.
And of course we rejoice in the merit of Bhante @sujato, Bhante @Brahmali and @HongDa who deal with all the corrections.
Let me still add @karl_lew to the list who has tirelessly been working on putting SuttaCentral Voice on new foundations, as the old version is technically outdated and its remaining lifetime is limited. I am glad to have the opportunity to support him as a tester and coordinator.
The work is tedious and slow, and we are not yet quite there, but we hope to soon reach the point where the new siteāor actually it will be a family of new websitesācan be linked to the speaker links on the SuttaCentral main site and guide people who want to listen to Suttas to the new Voice world.
Thanks also to @michaelh for help, @Gillian for formidable guinea pig services, @noeismet for contributing a French version to the Voice website family (which probably isnāt ready yet), as well as the entire SuttaCentral developer team!
I would also like to share my joy about some contributors who silently act behind the scenes, but whose contribution does make a difference nevertheless.
For one I would like to mention my two proofreaders @Olivia and @Bloom77 who help improve my German translations each at their own pace, slow or fast. What makes me particularly glad is that they actually enjoy reading the Suttas! This is what originally drove me when I started to engage in a translation project: sharing the joy that I can gain from the Suttas with those speakers of my own language who donāt find the older German translations very accessible and who arenāt fluent enough in English to read for example Bhante @sujatoās translations.
Each time I see this indeed happening it makes me very happy!
Another group I would like to mentionābut I canāt of course mention them by name because I have no idea who they areāare all those who have contributed to the SuttaCentral project with their donations. These funds are essential to bring the website forward, and at the moment in particular to work on the new version of the Bilara translation software without which my own work and that of other translators would not be possible!
In addition to all mentioned above, I would also like to thank Ayya @Vimala for helping out with the Light theme for SC-Voice.net. The Light theme hurts my eyes so it is painful for me to work on. Ayya Vimala has also bravely used the tri-lingual interface of SC-Voice.net and shown us how to improve that interface on phones.
Many thanks to Ayya @Sabbamitta, Ayya Soma, @Gabriel_L and @noeismet for their ongoing translations. Hearing the Dhamma in different languages is quite wonderful.
I didnāt mention in my interface translation rejoicing that there have been also many people who proofread the translations such as Bhante @Brahmali for the Norwegian and Ven. @Vimala and @Danny for Dutch. Also Ven. @sarana connected me with someone to do the Myanmar interface.
I would also like to rejoice in the merit collected by those here on the forum who take the time to answer Dhamma questions and write posts that enrich the conversation. There are too many for me to mention them all, but perhaps people could post their specific appreciation.
One person that stands out for me is Ven. @Dhammanando. There are many times when I see a post and think, āOh I hope Ven. Dhammanando joins in.ā And sure enough he drops by to share his wealth of knowledge.
Iād like to add a big sÄdhu to the @moderators
They put so much effort into making sure this is a safe and inclusive place for everyone to practice dhamma.
I also want to rejoice in all the hard work put into the recent Pali class. Not only by the leaders Bhante @sujato and @johnk but also the folks who supported with technical help and all of the students. Teaching as well as learning Pali is hard work but also very meritorious. I hope that all this hard work leads to new translations in the future.
Maybe some of the participants in the class could share their specific appreciations as well as share the merit they collected so we can rejoice.
After initially being worried that studying Pali during the rains retreat would be disturbing, I found that it actually brought me a lot of joy! It some how made me feel closer to the Buddha and his teachings, so Iām super grateful to @sujato and @johnk who make an excellent Pali teaching team.
The class participants have also been wonderful, the class is much smaller now but it is amazing to see how far we have all come in our understanding and I must say everyone has very excellent pronunciation.
