Embracing technology as the pastor: Use Bibleworks to make your own translation

There's nothing quite like making your own translation of the Bible. 

One of the great joys for me at Bible college was learning Greek and Hebrew so that I could get even closer to God's word.

But the Bible is a big book to translate.  So how do you keep track of your translations of different verses and work toward producing a complete translation?  

This is where Bibleworks comes in handy - it allows you to easily make you own translations. 

You can create a database in Bibleworks that then has the portability of any other translation you use in Bibleworks.

To make a translation, you don't need my advice.  Just follow the official Bibleworks instructions and you will be making your own version in no time.

But I will give you some tips that I discovered that help make the job of translating faster and easier.

Firstly, pick a version you like (I used Young's Literal Translation) and use it as a base version that you revise.  That way you save significant time that would be wasted writing out what you already agree with. 

Now this does mean that you're not strictly producing your own translation, you're revising a version.  Yet, don't be turned off.  This is a faster but still legitimate form of translation work.  After all most professional translations are not original translations, even the King James was based on Tyndale's work. 

If you do use a base version, I would also advise that you make common changes to your translation using the 'find and replace' function in a text editor.  For example, I replace in Young's Literal Translation all old English words like thou, cometh, findeth, seeketh etc, whenever I come across them.  That way you're not revising the same words again and again - you hit them all in one go each time.

Secondly, translate regularly.  I translate three verses a day from the three different Biblical texts that I read in my devotions.  To make it easier, I have three different Bibleworks tabs dedicated to the three passages (find out more about using tabs here).  I also update my version by translating the text I'm preaching on.

Thirdly, compile your database periodically.  I did it once a week in the early days when I was changing a lot of old English words.  Now I do it once a month.  This saves time rather than compiling it every time you translate.  Honestly, the changes to your version each time you work on it are not going to be that revolutionary - particularly if you are reasonably happy with the base version your are revising.  So you shouldn't need to compile the version that regularly.