BibleTrans uses compiler technology to translate the Bible from a language-neutral semantic representation into any natural human language given a generative grammar for that language.
BibleTrans is not BabelFish. BibleTrans is not about word substitution at all. Word substitution is not translation. Translation requires understanding the source text. Right now, only humans do it well. BibleTrans depends on human understanding of the Bible, so that like the five loaves and two fishes, it can be multiplied to do the other part of translation, hopefully into a thousand languages (read more about it here).
If a dozen active translators each took one year off their current projects
today to build the BibleTrans database, they could go back to their projects
three years ahead of where they would have been if they had stayed, and
at the same time they would take 1,000 years off Bible translation worldwide.
For more information, see BibleTrans Business Plan.
God cares.
So here I am working on it alone again...
The BibleTrans program was originally written for Macintosh (read about it here), but has recently been rewritten to run reasonably well on a PC, and we have the book of Philippians and some of Luke (thank you Elizabeth!) encoded and ready to translate. Click here to see the current progress.
Philippians Project shows the output from BibleTrans into English (and eventually other languages). This is obviously not church-ready, but it should be good enough to give to a team of "Mother-Tongue Translators" (with no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or English) to clean up. So far you can look at:
EnglishOther languages will become available when somebody is willing to work with me for a couple weeks to do it.
I have enough of the software working so you can download a runable "demo" program and play with it. The download program will usually be the latest version, which did the translation in the Philippians Project.
Legal The BibleTrans software and database represent a
huge investment of time and effort. We want that investment to be rewarded
in the form of real Bible translations that people can read. To facilitate
and encourage that outcome we are looking to use a form of "open
source" license to allow anybody to contribute to the goal while ensuring
that all Bible translation projects benefit from that collective effort.
Tom Pittman
email: TPittman@BibleTrans.info
Rev. 2008 April 24