This post lists the following links for on-line Bibles or Bible portions in these African languages: * French Bible 2,2 Mb * French New Testament 648 Kb * Standard Arab New Testament 454 Kb * Bible in Adamawa Fulfulde (Cameroon) 1,4 Mb * Bible in Hausa 1,7 Mb * New Testament in Kabyle (Algeria) 431 Kb * John’s Gospel in Malagasy 60 Kb * New Testament in Moore (Burkina Faso) 401 Kb * Bible in Swahili 1,7 Mb * 10 books of the Bible in Tamajaq Tawellemet (Niger) 170 Kb * Bible in Zarma (Niger) 1,4 Mb
Except for French and Arabic (we have already) these languages should be considered as strategic targets for Go Bible developers.
NB. Swahili is a special case - Go Bible Creator encountered errors when trying to convert sw.thm from ThML Reader or sw.xml from CCEL.
I have contacts with workers in AWM (Arab World Ministries), one of whom works with the Kabyle people of Algeria. It would therefore be highly advantageous to convert the Kabyle NT into a Go Bible collection, and to convert all of these modules to Zefania-XML format.
NB. The Swahili New Testament is now available as a download from the Go Bible Google Group. http://groups.google.com/group/go-bible/files
However the whole Bible in Swahili is downloadable from http://visionneuse.free.fr/ Format is XML. This would be a good candidate for Zefania XML conversion.
English translation of the French download page = http://tinyurl.com/2zqctf Machine translation is not 100% accurate - this link is a redirect to Google Translate service.
As in "If there are characters which are not posted correctly (square white) for certain versions in local languages, you can install the police force “Lucida Without Unicode” which contains the wide characters Latin."
The Kabyle NT is also available as a Bible module download from the Unbound Bible. This may be a more workable source file to convert for use with Go Bible Creator.
Although largely based on Latin characters, Kabyle also uses several characters that are not found in most Latin-based scripts. The file conversion tools would have to be Unicode compliant.
I have just created a Kabyle NT Go Bible. However, some of the Unicode characters special to Kabyle are not installed in my K750i mobile phone.
I have tested the module with mpowerplayer J2ME emulator, which displayed more of these characters than my Sony Ericsson. Alas not even the emulator could display all of them.
I guess this application must await the availability of J2ME phones that have the Unicode fonts installed that could support Kabyle.
The file conversion was done with TextPipe Standard, in two stage: 1. Unbound Bible format (unmapped UTF-8) to VPL 2. VPL to ThML (suitable for use with Go Bible Creator)
For the time being, book names and user interface are English.
Hausa is one of the main vernacular language in Nigeria. The Bible is available in the following Nigerian languages:
Yoruba Igbo Hausa Efik Edo Tiv
Bibles in these languages are available from http://www.biblesociety-nigeria.org/
As regards the Yoruba Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1850. The New Testament was first published in 1862. The complete Bible was first published in 1884. Yoruba is spoken by 20,000,000 people: 18,850,000 in Nigeria, 465,000 in Benin, an unknown number in Togo.
As regards the Igbo Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1860. The New Testament was first published in 1900. The complete Bible was first published in 1906. Igbo is spoken in Nigeria by 17,000,000 people.
As regards the Hausa Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1857. The New Testament was first published in 1880. The complete Bible was first published in 1932. Hausa is spoken by 22,231,000 people: 18,525,000 in Nigeria, 3,250,000 in Niger, 418,000 in Sudan, 24,000 in Cameroon, 14,000 elsewhere.
As regards the Efik Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1850. The New Testament was first published in 1862. The complete Bible was first published in 1868. Efik is spoken by 360,000 people: 350,000 in Nigeria, 10,000 in Cameroon.
As regards the Edo Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1914. The New Testament was first published in 1981. The complete Bible was first published in 1996. Edo is spoken in Nigeria by 1,000,000 people.
As regards the Tiv Bible, Part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1916. The New Testament was first published in 1936. The complete Bible was first published in 1964. Tiv is spoken by 2,212,000 people: 2,212,000 in Nigeria, an unknown number in Cameroon.
Copyright must have expired on some of these translations, so are there any electronic text files available for Yoruba (1884), Igbo (1906) and Efik (1868) Bibles?
Yoruba Reference Bible online found at http://www.africanportal.net/ABO/BibeliAtoka/ However all the books are PDF files of scanned pages of the Bibeli Atọka!
In 1875 the Church Missionary Society (CMS) organized a conference on Yoruba Orthography; the standard devised there was the basis for the orthography of the steady flow of religious and educational literature over the next seventy years. The current orthography of Yoruba derives from a 1966 report of the Yoruba Orthography Committee, along with Ayo Bamgbose's 1965 Yoruba Orthography, a study of the earlier orthographies and an attempt to bring Yoruba orthography in line with actual speech as much as possible.
In 1957, BFBS reprinted Bibeli Mimo, using the 1909 edition of the Yoruba OT and the 1930 revised edition of the Yoruba NT. In 1960, BFBS reprinted Bibeli Mimo, using the 1909 edition of the Yoruba OT and the 1959 revised edition of the Yoruba NT.