Welcome to Australian electronic Bibles

Australian Languages Welcome to aboriginalbibles.org.au- electronic Bibles from indigenous Australia!

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Overview

This aboriginalbibles.org.au website will expand to become a collection of electronic Bibles in a variety of Indigenous Australian languages. English is the primary user interface language for this site. However in future, we hope to have user interfaces in appropriate other languages as well.

aboriginalbibles.org.au is designed to work in any standard web browser that is included with most computers. We find it works best with later versions of Mozilla Firefox.

The goal of this site is to make the Christian Scriptures in Aboriginal and Torres Strait minority languages even more accessible, available, and useable than just in print form alone. There are many ways to navigate around a Bible on this site. The index you see on the left (yellow) pane provides a number of ways to find a passage.

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Find a language

Select the area where your language is spoken.
Then select the language you would like to view from the list presented. Keep in mind that some languages are known by more than one name (e.g. Burarra/Anbarra, Anmatyerr/Anmatjirra Torres Strait Creole/Yumplatok, or Murrinhpatha/Garama), so keep looking until you find yours.

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Basic navigation within each language:

If you click on a book name, you will get a list of the section titles for that book. It provides a bird's-eye view of the whole book. Each of these section titles is an active link. Click on one, and aboriginalbibles takes you there.
If you click on a chapter number under any book name, aboriginalbibles takes you there. Then you can scroll to any verse.
Some of the books have short introductions with information on such things as who wrote it, when, why they wrote it, book themes, and a high-level outline. Clicking on a link in the outline will take you to the beginning of that section.
The back arrow on the browser will take the user to the previous view or location.
There is a white tab above the yellow navigation pane that will Return to the beginning of the book.
As you move from book to book you will see a green tab near the top left of the right hand pane that tells you which book you are currently in. This is helpful when you are in the middle of a large book, or jumping from one active link to another.

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Some additional features:

Parallel passages are found as active links below section titles where different versions of the same story occur in more than one book. This is most common in the synoptic Gospels. If that particular book has been translated, then the parallel passages referring to that book are all active links. In this way the user can compare the same story, for example, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, simply by clicking the mouse.
There are two kinds of footnotes in aboriginalbibles.org.au. The first are cross references, to the source of an Old Testament quote, or allusion, or to where something similar is said. Again, unless they refer to Old Testament books not yet translated, then the cross references referring to that book are all active links.The cross reference series is marked with superscript lower case letters, a, b, c, d, e,… They restart the alphabet at each chapter. If the user simply hovers the mouse over one of these cross reference markers, the contents of the cross reference will pop up in a box with a pastel yellow background. If the user wants to follow the chain of active links, they simply click on the reference marker which takes them to the actual footnote, highlighted in blue to distinguish it from all the other footnotes. Then click again on the active link of the passage they want.
The second kind of footnote is an information footnote. These explain things about Jewish or Roman customs, relevant archeological finds, meanings of some Greek or Hebrew works, meanings of some names, important textual variants, important exegetical variants, etc. These information footnotes are marked with superscript symbols *, †, ‡, §,… They restart the sequence at each chapter. If the user simply hovers the mouse over one of these cross reference markers, the contents of the footnote will pop up in a box with a pastel green background.
If you are finding the font size too small for your eyes, in most browsers you can increase font size by clicking on View, Text Size, Increase.

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The Concordance:

Many church workers in Australia are familiar with the idea of an English Bible concordance, but have never had access to one in an indigenous Australian language. aboriginalbibles.org.au makes this useful ministry tool accessible to everyone.

At the very top of the yellow navigation pane click on the Concordance.
This opens up an alphabetical list. Let's say we want to do a topical study seeing what the Bible says about living in darkness (dakbala in the Kriol language) and living in the light (lait in the Kriol language).
Beside the ‘D’ letter click on the plus sign ‘+’, then find dakbala. You will see this occurs 189 times in the Kriol Baibul.
Click on dakbala. You will see all occurrences of dakbala appear in the upper right hand pane. Scroll down through the list.
Click on the link in Ephesians 5:8 (Efs 5.8), and you will see that passage appear in the lower right hand pane, with all occurrences of dakbala highlighted.
Now go back to the yellow navigation pane at the left, and open up ‘L’ to find lait. Find and click on the link to 1 John 2:8 (Fes Jon 2:8) and you will see that passage appear in the lower right hand pane, with all occurrences of lait highlighted.
You get the idea. As well as single words, phrasal words like “Holy Spirit” or “Son of God” will show up in some languages.

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Other information

All the features described above enable any speaker of the language who has access to this internet version or the stand-alone CD version to have a turbo-charged Bible study tool that they have never before had access to. In addition, the user can:

Copy material into sermon, Bible study, or personal notes;
Print materials for study; and pass the Scriptures on to others.

Speakers of Australian languages have increasing access to computers and to the web, particularly young people. This makes the aboriginalbibles.org.au scriptures attractive to high school and university students, partly because of the “wow!” factor. But church workers and seminary students are also keen to get it and use it.

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For optimal performance, download the latest software

The site is optimized for browsing with Firefox, which you can download here. aboriginalbibles.org.au looks best if you install the Gentium and Andika fonts, which you can download by following those links (and then put the files in your Fonts directory, usually C:\Windows\Fonts). We chose to optimize for Firefox in anticipation of using this technology with languages which require special minority-language fonts, since there are versions of Firefox that support Graphite, SIL's smart font technology, which is required for some non-Roman alphabets.

NOTE: aboriginalbibles.org.au uses simple “scripts” (computer codes) to highlight words and run other computer commands to function well. This program does not use “ActiveX controls” and also does not interfere with other files on your computer.

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Each of the translations on aboriginalbibles.org.au is copyrighted, and used by permission of the copyright holder. The copyright is protected by international law. The copyright notice for each translation is to be found on the introductory screen for each book, and as a watermark in the background of the scripture text. The copyright notice is not to prevent any legitimate use and copying, but to guard against anyone modifying it or otherwise misusing it. Permission is given to use and copy up to a whole chapter of the electronic Bible materials provided that:

· the text of scripture is not changed

· the material is not used for profit

· the source is cited in writing (aboriginalbibles.org.au)

For those wishing to use more than a chapter at a time, written permission can be obtained from AuSIL, 12/18 Essington Avenue, Gray, NT, 0830, Australia or email us at ausil@sil.org. For non-WBTA scriptures, requests can be sent to the same email address and will be forwarded to the appropriate copyright holder.

The churches and all involved in the translations included here are deeply grateful for the help of all the individuals and partner organisations who made the translations and aboriginalbibles.org.au project possible through their prayers, skills, and financial contributions. There are continuing Bible translation projects in many other languages in Australia, and there are a number of requests to begin additional translation projects. A number of international Bible agencies are all cooperating in these efforts. Wycliffe Bible Translators (both WBTUS and WBT Australia) have both played key partnership roles in the translation of these scriptures and the development of the aboriginalbibles website.

If you would like to help with this work or receive news about it to aid in prayer please send an e-mail to ausil@sil.org.

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