Monday, May 24, 2010

Introduction to the Open English Translation

I've been thinking for a loooong time about starting a new English Bible translation (unashamedly inspired by the public domain World English Bible (WEB) of Michael Paul Johnson and team). After much searching and pondering, I've come up with the name: Open English Translation (OET) of the Bible.

Open (unashamedly inspired by Open Source software) expresses my desire to make it freely available for others to use or adapt in any way. I haven't decided on a licence yet, so feel free to make suggestions. I'm also wanting to make it open in the sense of open for others to join in and help with (but that doesn't mean that it would be open to everyone -- just those who show a genuine interest and ability). As mentioned in prior blogs, there's a number of others way ahead of me in developing the necessary (web) software tools for that kind of project.

English because it'll be an English translation. (It seems a little ethnocentric to me to leave the language qualifier out of the title, although it is true that in most cases that language of the title itself indicates the language of the translation.)

Translation just to remind readers/users that it is indeed just a translation of the original Scriptures. (Again it seems a little deficient to me if a book called something like The Holy Bible doesn't clearly remind its readers that it's not the original.)

I'll try to progressively blog about various aspects of the OET over the next few weeks.

3 comments:

  1. Of course, I am quite interested in this project :-)

    For license, how about CC-BY-SA? Isn't this what Distant Shores have chosen for their free discipleship tools?

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  2. Oh, have you seen the Open English Bible project? Likewise it is in its infancy, but maybe you could join forces? http://openenglishbible.org/

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  3. Yes, I'm sure I'll end up with the Creative Commons BY-SA licence.

    And yes, I blogged about the OEB in http://openscripture.blogspot.com/2010/04/trickles-turn-into-rivers.html

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