After uncovering unusual AI misclassifications in Mexican genealogical records, history professor Mark Christensen seeks to teach the next generation how to do what only he can.
What if you were one of the only people who could translate a language? What if because of that, you found yourself spiritually burdened, and wanting to share your knowledge? Well, as one of the few latter-day saint scholars who are familiar with colonial Aztec and Maya, that is exactly what Brigham Young University History Professor Mark Christensen did.
While visiting the Merida, Mexico temple on a trip with his son, Christensen discovered something interesting.
As they performed baptisms, he noticed that the names coming across the screen were indigenous, but there was something strange going on. One of the names was something like “Juan Tlacuilo,” and due to his extensive knowledge of Yucatec Maya and the Aztec language Nahuatl, Christensen was able to recognize that “Tlacuilo” means scribe. The name translated to “Juan the Scribe”, Christensen realized that “Tlacuilo” isn’t a last name.
When he returned to the states, Christensen discovered that AI, while indexing the digitized genealogical source records, was misclassifying the words it didn’t understand as names — like Nahuatl “Tlacuilo” meaning scribe, being identified as a last name.
The source records for these names — colonial-era Mexican family history records—are written in a mixture of Spanish, Yucatec Maya, and Nahuatl. While AI is “great for known languages like Spanish and German,”, it is not an expert in Yucatec Maya and Nahuatl.
When AI comes across words in Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya that it can’t translate, it records them as names. However, because these are misclassifications, AI is erroneously creating records of people that aren’t real, and these errors need to be fixed.
“You're baptizing people that never existed,” Christensen says, "The problem is, I'm the only Latter-day Saint scholar that I know of that can translate colonial Aztec and Maya.”
Having such a unique skill set, he feels, “the weight of countless people in the spirit world waiting,” for their temple work to be done.
To help resolve this issue, Christensen decided to start a special topics history class called HIS 390R: Maya and Aztec Family History. Students learn basic words in Nahuatl and Yucatec Maya, so they can then work individually and as a class to correct misclassification errors from AI on colonial era Mexican family history records in FamilySearch.
One of Christensen’s students, Ammon Smith, a senior studying family history/genealogy, took the class because of his interest in Latin American genealogy.
“It’s not a class where you sit down and take notes from a lecture,” Smith says. “He wants his students to cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ and learn something useful from his class.”
Along with the work he has done in the class, Smith is working with Christensen and the BYU Center for Family and Genealogy to create a paleography tutorial for their “Script Tutorial” web page, on how to read these records. They hope to publish them over the summer.
The impact of this class goes beyond simply learning to translate. Students pair practical skills of translation with the work of family history, seamlessly blending study and faith. Christensen’s teaching is meant to not only provide a valuable skill, but to aid in student’s desire to serve.
“This is a real tangible result you can do from a computer at home,” he says.
For Grace Wilde, a junior and pre-dental major from Reno, Nevada, Christensen “is the epitome” of embodying the mission and aims of BYU as a professor. He taught her that both the gospel and academic sides of her life can complement each other.
“I'm learning how to serve, and building my character,” Wilde says. “It helped me get out of my comfort zone and learn a new skill that has the potential to bless a lot of people.”
She believes that Christensen’s “passion for what he teaches is contagious” and that what she learned in his class was both “spiritually strengthening” and “intellectually enlarging.”
Ashlyn Edwards, a senior marketing major, has taken several classes from Christensen over the years and has observed his love for the class subject matter and helping his students.
“When a professor is passionate about what they're doing, you can tell, and everyone feeds off of it. It's fun to be around that,” she says. “He’s passionate about making sure we become good people.”
Apart from the special topics class, Christensen’s academic research mainly focuses on translating and analyzing colonial era sermons in Yucatec Maya and Nahuatl, a subject he has written several books on. Currently, he is writing a book on Yucatec Maya sermons on the Passion of Christ, seeking to learn the Maya understanding of Christianity.
He hopes to move forward with the class and make it an official course.
“Belonging goes beyond what we feel in a university classroom or a ward activity. It includes the gathering of Israel, and this is essentially what my students are doing,” Christensen says.
To learn more about Christensen’s work or Smith’s journey in the class, head to our website here.