Publishing USFM-encoded Bible translations for mobile phones. Instantly.

Many years ago, in jungle outposts around the world, Bible translators were hard at work writing their translations by hand. Technology improved and they began using typewriters to key in the Scriptures, in preparation for publishing the translation as a book.

Introduction to USFM

They needed to keep things organized and consistent, so they invented a way of marking the texts to indicate the different parts, e.g. verse numbers, chapter numbers, section headings, etc. This markup eventually became what is today Unified Standard Format Markers (USFM). USFM has well over a hundred format markers and looks like this1:

\c 1
\v 1 From Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and from Timothy, our Brother.
\v 2 To Christ’s People at Colossae — the Brothers who are faithful to him: May God, our Father, bless you and give you peace.

The mobile opportunity

Fast-forward a few decades from the typewriters in the jungles to today. There are more than 4 billion mobile phones in the world today, and experts predict 100% penetration of mobile phones within a few years. The same people groups that were being served by missionaries with typewriters now have (or will soon have) mobile phones, connected to the Internet.

Clearly, this presents an awesome opportunity for the Gospel and the digital publishing of Bible texts! However, most of the translated Bible texts are stored as USFM-encoded text files. These are of very limited use on a mobile phone and converting them to mobile-friendly formats can be time-consuming and complicated.

Bible translations on Door43

Door43 exists to provide a platform for believers anywhere in the world to work together in the creation, translation and distribution of unrestricted discipleship resources. A crucial resource is, of course, the translated Word of God. So we have been dreaming from the beginning of the Door43 project of being able to "copy-and-paste" USFM-encoded Bible translations into Door43, and have them display in a web browser completely formatted for easy reading.

We were told it could take a very long time to develop this technology. But today we are thrilled to announce that a volunteer in Indonesia has developed an extension to the MediaWiki server (which powers Door43) called "USFMtag" that does exactly what we had envisioned. USFM-encoded Bible translations can be copied-and-pasted into any page on Door43 and the raw text is rendered in the browser as formatted text. For instance, this:

<usfm>
\c 1
\v 1 From Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and from Timothy, our Brother.
\v 2 To Christ’s People at Colossae — the Brothers who are faithful to him: May God, our Father, bless you and give you peace.
</usfm>

is displayed as this:

So a translation team can edit the USFM of their Bible translation in Door43 (or copy and paste from other translation software) and, after saving their changes, the Bible text is instantly e-published online.

From Door43 to mobile phones, instantly

Thanks to the Door43 Mobile Portal, these USFM-encoded texts are available "out of the box" as mobile web-optimized, offline-ready pages that can be displayed from anyone's website. You could, today, set up the open-source Door43 Mobile Portal, copy-and-paste your Bible translation into Door43, and make the mobile version of the translation available from your own website. For free.

Here are some more images showing the USFMtag extension in use in a translation of the Bible in Indonesian on Door43 (click the pictures for larger versions):

We are excited to see this tremendous opportunity already a reality: instantaneous digital publishing of discipleship resources – including USFM-encoded Bible translations – for use on any mobile phone!

More to come

The USFMtag extension to Door43 is a tremendous step forward for web-based Bible translation by geographically-distributed translation teams. We are working on implementing additional extensions, including a concurrent text editor that allows many people to edit the same page in Door43 (such as USFM-encoded Bible translations) at the same time. This and other extensions are planned to make Bible translation and digital publishing as efficient as possible.

If you would like to find out more about how you can help, please contact us and considering volunteering.

Photo credit: etharooni

• 1. Taken from the Open English Bible, a Public Domain update of the Twentieth Century New Testament.