World English Bible translation project update 13 October 2011
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Kahunapule Michael Johnson
Oct 13, 2011, 10:45:11 PM10/13/11
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Greetings!
It has been a long time since the last update on this mailing list. Please forgive me for the long silence. I've been rather busy.
One of the main tasks, lately, has been to change the electronic publication strategy of the World English Bible to make it more useful for other languages and translations. Instead of the very simple but somewhat limited GBF format as a master format, we switched to Unicode UTF-8 USFM as the master format for the World English Bible. Then we started rewriting the software that converted that new format to the various output formats we want to distribute. It has been a long road, but worth it. We did that because USFM is the format used by many Bible translators who are working to make the Holy Bible available in many of the minority languages of the world. So far, we have just done the HTML output, plus USFX. The HTML output is an improvement over the original World English Bible HTML, which will be phased out. It is one file per chapter for faster loading, formatted for clear display on small screens (like smart phones) as well as computer screens. It can also be used off line after downloading the HTML .zip file and unzipping it to a directory on your local computer. Just open one of the .htm files in that directory with your favorite browser, and start reading the Bible.
The beginnings of the fruit of switching from GBF to USFM is apparent in the diversity of Bible translations that you can find on http://PNGScriptures.org, http://VanuatuBibles.org, http://BibleCambodia.org, http://eBible.org, and others. Any similarity in the HTML for those sites is not a coincidence. :-)
Work on updating the Old Testament of the World English Bible is still in progress. The latest updates are in the HTML, USFM, and USFX versions at http://eBible.org/web/. Until we get updates of the other formats automated, again, those will lag behind, as will World English Bible: Messianic Edition and World English Bible British Edition. Once the updates are automated, those will be updated at the same time as the main World English Bible.
There is a huge backlog of proofreading comments on the World English Bible that still need to be evaluated, and if necessary, corrections made. Hopefully this will dwindle rapidly as we turn our focus on that work, as will the systematic updates, such as poetry/prose markup and quotation punctuation and updating the few remaining archaic English constructs.
We have just made the decision to restart the World English Bible Apocrypha, basing it on the Revised Version Apocrypha instead of the KJV Apocrypha. We are well aware of differing opinions on the Apocrypha, both personal and denominational. Whatever you think, we believe that it is worth preserving and making available as a companion to the Old and New Testaments of the World English Bible. The Revised Version includes some valuable scholarly updates over the KJV Apocrypha, as well as using slightly less archaic language. It is still in the Public Domain-- and actually more so, since it is not encumbered by by a Crown Patent in the UK, for whatever that might be worth. Therefore, it makes a better starting point for the same sort of process that we used on the Old and New Testaments, except for one thing. We haven't yet found a high quality electronic version to start from, other than some image scans of printed pages. It will take some re-keying, or maybe OCR work plus heavy editing. If you are interested in helping with the typing process, please let me know.
It has been a long time since the last update on this mailing list. Please forgive me for the long silence. I've been rather busy.
One of the main tasks, lately, has been to change the electronic publication strategy of the World English Bible to make it more useful for other languages and translations. Instead of the very simple but somewhat limited GBF format as a master format, we switched to Unicode UTF-8 USFM as the master format for the World English Bible. Then we started rewriting the software that converted that new format to the various output formats we want to distribute. It has been a long road, but worth it. We did that because USFM is the format used by many Bible translators who are working to make the Holy Bible available in many of the minority languages of the world. So far, we have just done the HTML output, plus USFX. The HTML output is an improvement over the original World English Bible HTML, which will be phased out. It is one file per chapter for faster loading, formatted for clear display on small screens (like smart phones) as well as computer screens. It can also be used off line after downloading the HTML .zip file and unzipping it to a directory on your local computer. Just open one of the .htm files in that directory with your favorite browser, and start reading the Bible.
The beginnings of the fruit of switching from GBF to USFM is apparent in the diversity of Bible translations that you can find on http://PNGScriptures.org, http://VanuatuBibles.org, http://BibleCambodia.org, http://eBible.org, and others. Any similarity in the HTML for those sites is not a coincidence. :-)
Work on updating the Old Testament of the World English Bible is still in progress. The latest updates are in the HTML, USFM, and USFX versions at http://eBible.org/web/. Until we get updates of the other formats automated, again, those will lag behind, as will World English Bible: Messianic Edition and World English Bible British Edition. Once the updates are automated, those will be updated at the same time as the main World English Bible.
There is a huge backlog of proofreading comments on the World English Bible that still need to be evaluated, and if necessary, corrections made. Hopefully this will dwindle rapidly as we turn our focus on that work, as will the systematic updates, such as poetry/prose markup and quotation punctuation and updating the few remaining archaic English constructs.
We have just made the decision to restart the World English Bible Apocrypha, basing it on the Revised Version Apocrypha instead of the KJV Apocrypha. We are well aware of differing opinions on the Apocrypha, both personal and denominational. Whatever you think, we believe that it is worth preserving and making available as a companion to the Old and New Testaments of the World English Bible. The Revised Version includes some valuable scholarly updates over the KJV Apocrypha, as well as using slightly less archaic language. It is still in the Public Domain-- and actually more so, since it is not encumbered by by a Crown Patent in the UK, for whatever that might be worth. Therefore, it makes a better starting point for the same sort of process that we used on the Old and New Testaments, except for one thing. We haven't yet found a high quality electronic version to start from, other than some image scans of printed pages. It will take some re-keying, or maybe OCR work plus heavy editing. If you are interested in helping with the typing process, please let me know.
--
Aloha,
Kahunapule Michael Johnson
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