2. Global Bible Initiative
• Formerly “Asia Bible Society”
Our mission:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
Mark 16:15 (ESV)
3. Global Bible Initiative
Our work:
• Bible translation: Chinese, Cambodian (Khmer), Burmese, Hindi,
Punjabi, Japanese
• Biblical Research with particular focus on Linguistic Analysis of source
language data
• Linguistic Research with particular focus on the relations between
source languages and target languages
• Software Development Platform to support the translation process
• The BibleGrapevine website
4. BibleGrapevine
Making the data available for linguistic research in the Bible
A website where Biblical scholars and students can explore
the linguistic features and structures of the original Biblical texts
and their translations.
5. Linguistic data deployed so far
• Trees – representation of syntactic structures
o Hebrew OT trees
o Greek NT trees
o Chinese trees of Bible translations
o English trees of Bible translations
• Tree alignment
o Alignment between source language trees and translation trees to represent
correspondences at all levels
o Alignment between translations through the source languages
6. Trees
Representation of syntactic structures
• Layers of word groups
o Words
o Phrases
o Clauses
o Sentences
• Syntactic relations between words
12. Tree Alignment
Correspondence at all levels of syntactic structures
• Words
• Phrases
• Clauses
• Sentences
Types of Correspondence
• One-to-one
• One-to-many
• Many-to-one
• Many-to-many
16. BibleGrapevine
What distinguishes BibleGrapevine from other Bible study
websites?
• Focus on linguistic aspects of the Bible
• Linguistic Units in different granularities
• Detailed analysis of translations
• Refined links between translations and original texts
• Data visualization
• Intelligent search
17. BibleGrapevine
Features developed so far:
• Basic Views
• Interlinear Views
• Reference Views
• Tree Views
• Translation Memory Views
• Concordance Views
28. Interlinear View
Traditional interlinear: word-based
o Not easy to represent one-to-many, many-to-many
correspondences
o Hard to represent correspondences between discontinuous units
o Not easy to see correspondences between bigger chunks of text
Dynamic interlinear: variable linguistic units
o Easy to see correspondences between any units
52. Next?
Search for similar words, phrases, clauses and sentences
• Beyond identical texts: similar words in similar syntactic relations
• Probabilistic: results ranked by similarity scores
• Search item: type in the search box or select any chunk of text from
any views
Explore Word Senses
• Translations as reflecting different senses of words
53. Questions
• Who do you think will be the main users of this website?
• Which views are more useful to the users?
• What additional views/functionalities are desirable?
Editor's Notes
When I presented at the last BibleTech two years ago, the organization I work for was called Asia Bible Society. This name can be confusing and may make people think that we were affiliated with other Bible societies, such as American Bible Society and German Bible Society. Therefore we came up with a new name: Global Bible Initiative. Our mission is the Great Commission.
In the last 15 years or so, we have spent most of our time on Bible translation. We’ve been working on new translations in Chinese, Cambodian, Burmese, Hindi, Punjabi, and Japanese.
While working on Bible translation, we did a lot of Biblical Research with particular focus on Linguistic Analysis of source language data. We also did a lot of linguistic research with particular focus on the relations between source languages and target languages. All the translations are carefully linked to the source language data, resulting in a huge knowledge base of Biblical language data.
Computer technology has been used extensively in the creation of this knowledge base, and a software platform has been developed to support all the translation work.
More recently, we started developing a website called BibleGrapevine, where we try to use this knowledge base to create applications for Biblical scholars and students to explore the linguistic features and structures of the original Biblical texts and their translations. You can tell why we chose this name if you know our connection with GrapeCity.
The website is still under development. The linguistic data that has been deployed so far consist of trees and tree alignment only.
Trees are representations of syntactic structures. They show the word groups in different layers, word, phrases, clauses, sentences. They also show the syntactic relations between the words.
Tree alignment represents the relationships between source languages and translations. Once the translations are all linked to the source languages, alignments between different translations can be established through the source languages. So no alignment between the translations are necessary.
Tree alignment identifies correspondences at all levels of syntactic structures, words, phrases, clauses and sentences. The correspondence can be one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.
Demo
Demo
Demo
So, what What distinguishes BibleGrapevine from other Bible study websites?
Focus on linguistic aspects of the Bible. It doesn’t have commentaries, at least for now, but linguistic analysis is deeper than ever before.
Linguistic Units in different granularities. All the features operate not only on the word level and verse level, but on all levels, from words, phrases to sentences.
Detailed analysis of translations. For example, all the translation texts are syntactically analyzed.
Refined links between translations and original texts. Everything is accounted for.
Data visualization, as you will see in the demo.
Intelligent search, meaning-based search rather than string-based search
In the remaining time of this presentation, I will give you a demo of the system.
The system is still under development. Here are the views that have already been developed. I’ll show them one by one in the demo.
Here are the features that are yet to be developed.
The site is not public yet. So you won’t find it in Google.
It is a testing site and it uses a small dataset in order to speed up the development cycle and save space. The test set contains the books of Matthew and John.
A bird’s eye view of the whole Bible, with the size of each book proportional to the number of words in the book.
