to be tackling Japanese, Georgian, Zulu, Malayalam, Serbian, Croatian, Finnish
and Russian as soon as we can.
This might seem like a lot of work, and it is. But when you look at it,
it’s not that much incremental work to get existing works of the Writings that
have already been translated into a site where they can be linked to the Word
and seen by thousands of people. It’s a very effective way to reach out to the
world.
Can New Church People Help?
We recently ran a three-week project with a talented team of Latin students.
They worked their way through the processing of 19 existing translations
of Swedenborg’s works. They worked in Latin, English, Dutch, Korean and
Czech, and have brought our total offering to 160 translations in 11 languages.
There’s still a long way to go, but it was great progress!
Some people are helping by reading old sermons into Google docs,
using the free voice-to-text feature that Google provides. Other people are
providing plain-language explanations of the internal sense. Bilingual people
are helping to make the site’s user interface work in various languages. Some
creative people are providing photos and artwork that can illustrate stories and
concepts. Some New Church software developers have pitched in to help with
aspects of development. Many people have donated money to help fund the
work of the core staff.
How Does This Project Relate to the General Church and Other Outreach
Projects?
The New Christian Bible Study Project has been a cross-church-branch project
from its inception. All the church branches value the Word and the Writings,
and they all have an interest in seeing them be multilingual, widely read, easy
to use side-by-side, and with ready cross-referencing and searchability.
We have good informal working relationships with all the church branches,
with the colleges and seminaries and schools, and with the Swedenborgian
publishers. The Rt. Rev. Peter Buss Jr. is on our Board of Directors, which
provides a good General Church connection.
We’re already linking to many resources coming from various New Church
projects, and we’re planning to increase this cross-fertilization.
What Can New Church Life Readers Look Forward To?
• For each targeted language, we’ll have a user interface, a translation of
the Word, translations of the Writings, and explanations.
• There will be more, better explanations, with choices for text, audio and
video.
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