One of the most important things that’s needed to complete Bible translation projects is something many people take for granted: internet access.
As more and more people around the world translate the Bible for their own communities, a strong and reliable internet connection provides training and consulting opportunities to keep the work moving forward.
Learn how satellite internet technology like Starlink is helping deliver Scripture to people faster than ever before.
Wycliffe’s mission is to serve with the global body of Christ to advance Bible translation and work together so people can encounter God through his Word.
Archives for September 2021
Reaching for the Stars
September 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Scripture Earth App
September 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Chris and his colleagues have been working on Scripture App Builder (SAB) since before its first release in 2015. SAB has been used to create thousands of contextualized Bible apps by many organizations. In 2017, SAB 3.3 added support for building apps on macOS and creating iOS apps. There are many Android apps that have been published to Google Play. However, there have been quite a bit fewer iOS apps published to the Apple App Store created with SAB (some examples: Sylheti, Pertukekem, Dari, Northern Thai, Hindi, and Chin). This is due to Apple rejecting apps if there were too many from the same developer account. As a solution, Apple told publishers to create a single container app that would allow the user to select the content.
This year, with SAB 9.0, we have enabled our partners to create an iOS container app as Apple has recommended. An organization can take their projects for Android, make a few changes for iOS, and build packages of resources that can be downloaded by the iOS container app. When the user runs the app for the first time, they select a language, download a package of resources, and then the container app becomes like a fully contextualized Bible app for that specific language!
We have talked with a few of our partners and they are excited about the opportunity to make their resources available on iOS. One of these partners is ScriptureEarth. They publish a website that hosts and links to Scripture resources in thousands of languages. They currently use Scriptoria (the web service that Chris works on) to publish Android Apps to Google Play and then link to the apps on their website. Scriptoria has been updated to support building the language resource packages used by the iOS container app. They will finally be able to provide an iOS app for all of these language communities.
ScriptureEarth Impact
Bill Dyck, a co-worker of Chris’ at JAARS, uses Scriptoria to publish many of the Android apps on ScriptureEarth.
I had the privilege of watching one of the women I am teaching ESL discussion in Laos come to know the LORD! GOD IS AMAZING! Anyhow, I was able to share with her ScriptureEarth to help her find the Bible in her heart language as well as encourage her to watch the Jesus Film and the Mary Magdela Film. It is SO WONDERFUL to have these resources so easily accessible. She lives in Laos and this resource proves to be so practical and beneficial. I literally use it or share it weekly! LOVE IT!
