Coming soon at https://aquifer.bible.
<aside> 💡 Imagine a world where everyone has free and unrestricted access to trustworthy Bible translations in a language they can understand, together with rich biblical resources that illuminate the meaning of the Scriptures in the original languages. Enabling widespread understanding of the Bible and trustworthy Bible translations in thousands of languages—this is the vision that drives The Bible Aquifer.
</aside>
What need is The Bible Aquifer intended to meet?
In people groups all over the world, God is raising up His church. Many of these churches are newly planted and often in some of the most hostile regions of the world. They urgently need the Word of God in their own languages and many of them are learning to translate the Bible as part of their theological formation. But they are facing a serious challenge: they need high quality biblical and translational resources in order to be able to produce trustworthy Bible translations in their own languages. These resources must be simultaneously three things:
The Bible Aquifer project intends to meet this need.
What if recent developments in the domain of Bible translation, publishing, and technology have created an unprecedented opportunity to meet the need?
For many decades, the modern Bible translation movement has been working toward the goal of eradicating Bible poverty. The "Every Tribe, Every Nation" (ETEN) Alliance of Bible agencies and Bible societies is expanding their strategy to include emerging models of Bible translation, by seeking to strengthen Bible translation processes done by the church into their own languages. The Bible Aquifer project is a key part of the Alliance's strategic intent to equip the global church to achieve excellence in Bible translation.
This intent is supported by immense generosity from a growing number of publishers of biblical and translational resources. Biblica (https://open.bible) is releasing dozens of Bible translations under open licenses. Tyndale (https://tyndaleopenresources.com) is releasing high quality biblical resources under open licenses, e.g., study notes, a Bible dictionary, etc. FaithLife has released the SBLGNT under an open license. A global network of content creators and translators (including unfoldingWord (https://unfoldingword.org) and numerous partner organizations) are creating open-licensed translation resources intended for use by global church translators.
Recent developments in the domain of computer technology are also contributing to an optimal context for The Bible Aquifer. Bible technologists around the world are collaborating together to create the Open Components Ecosystem (https://opencomponents.io)—aa-786a/) means of creating reusable, open-source technology that greatly increases collaboration and accelerated innovation. In addition, the rise of AI-enhanced translation technologies is suggesting the possibility of rapidly translating massive quantities of biblical content in a fraction of the time it would otherwise require.
How might we bring all of this together in a plan that meets the needs?
Some types of biblical resources are more useful than others for Bible translation. Some languages of wider communication are more strategic than others. In order to equip the global church for excellence in Bible translation, the most useful types of biblical resources need to be provided in the most strategic languages used by the church for translation. The Strategic Languages Initiative reflects global patterns of multilingualism by describing four levels of biblical resources and distributing the world's Languages of Wider Communication across them. In general, languages with greater numbers of multilingual speakers and large numbers of other languages connected to them are in the higher levels. It is important to note that this plan prioritizes a minimum number of Resource Types in Strategic Languages—the expectation is that others may choose to make many more resources available in many more languages beyond the minimum proposed here.
Strategic Languages Initiative (Draft 10)
In order to understand the process of providing biblical resources in all the world’s major languages, we use the metaphor of an aquifer: rain that falls to the ground filters through limestone and the pure water is available to anyone who desires to drill a well and pump the water out.