What is Oral Bible Translation (OBT)?

If you want to learn how to fix something, would you rather read the manual or watch a YouTube video? Would you rather learn by reading a book or by listening to a podcast?

Roughly two-thirds of the world’s population learn best through oral communication, which means they learn best through listening to audio recordings, watching videos, or talking to people. Oral Bible Translation is a form of Bible Translation that’s designed to specifically serve those people. Having an understandable audio translation of the Bible means that people are able to access God’s Word in a format that communicates clearly to them and speaks deeply to their hearts.

How is Oral Translation different from audio recordings of existing translations?

When people talk, we use different vocabulary and grammar than we do when write because written and spoken communication have different strengths and limitations. For example, when you’re reading a book and come across a confusing section, you can easily pause, go back, and reread the section. You can’t, however, ask the pastor at your church to go back a few seconds in the middle of the sermon if what he says is confusing. As a result, oral communication requires things to be said differently to make it easy for the audience to understand what is being said and how it connects to the previous information.

It’s this fundamental difference between spoken communication and written communication that makes oral translation projects different from audio recordings of existing translations. While audio recordings are producing an audio product, the actual translations they’re based off of are designed to be read—not heard. That means that the recording is often difficult to listen to and understand.

Another major difference between oral translation and audio recordings is the amount of work that oral translation teams put into appropriately exegeting the performance of the final product. How you say something affects its meaning. A simple phrase like “What do you think?” could sound challenging, encouraging, or combative depending on the person’s tone of voice, body language, and intonation pattern. Since oral translations are designed to be listened to, the translators start researching the most exegetically sound performance decisions from the beginning of the translation process, making sure that the final product’s performance is as accurate to the original text as possible. Since written translations are not designed to be listened to, the translation teams spend little if any time specifically focused on the performance, which means there’s a higher likelihood that the final product contains exegetically inaccurate delivery that may affect the listener’s interpretation of biblical passages.

Why does English need another translation?

There are three primary reasons why we believe that English needs the Spoken English Bible.

1) People in the United States are becoming more and more oral in their communication styles. With the advent of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, more people are choosing to get their information and entertainment through podcasts, audiobooks, and video means. This means that people are less likely to choose to read a book—even if the book is as significant and impactful as the Bible. We want to make the Bible accessible for our cultural context, and we believe that an oral translation will speak deeply to the hearts of young Americans because it communicates to them in the way that they best learn and understand.

2) American English has changed significantly over the centuries, and much of the vocabulary that has been used historically in English translations is no longer accessible to people outside the church. As we have interviewed people for our translation project, we have found that people outside the church don’t understand many traditional church terms like “sin,” “grace,” “righteous,” and “repent.” This means that people who have never interacted with the Bible before are lost when they hear stories from the Bible for the first time and can’t understand what is going on or why it matters. One of our goals with this translation is to use language that communicates God’s truth clearly to people today, using words that people today use to describe important biblical concepts so that everyone can easily understand God’s Word.

3) Translation projects around the world have been asking for the Spoken English Bible for years. In much of the world, translators need to rely on already existing translations to help them figure out how to translate the Bible into their own languages. Often those translations are in English. Having an English oral translation like the SEB provides teams with a vital resource. As teams are making their own decisions about how to translate certain passages or what tone of voice to use in a certain situation, they can reference back to the SEB to help them think through the decision and arrive at a good conclusion.

What is the difference between story-based and traditional viewing options?

The Bible is divided into lots of different stories, teachings, prayers, and songs. Sometimes those stories are shorter than one chapter, and sometimes they span several. In the story-based section, you can listen to the stories as whole units, no matter how many verses or chapters they span. This makes it easier to understand the broader context of individual verses. In the traditional section, the book is divided by chapter like it would be in a printed Bible, making it easier to find specific references.

How can I get involved?

There are three main ways you can get involved in helping the SEB:

1) Pray for us! We believe that God hears prayer and that the SEB will only succeed as long as God is guiding us. We want to stay sensitive to the guidance of God’s Spirit, and we’d appreciate your prayer support as we continue to translate the rest of the Bible.

2) Share our content with people who would benefit from it! If you know someone who would benefit from the SEB, give them our website URL, show them our YouTube channel, or download our app. We want this to reach the people who need it most, and we’d love your help in spreading the word.

3) Give financially! We’re a non-profit project, and so we rely on the generosity of others to have the resources necessary to produce the translation. Your financial support makes a difference and enables us to pay our translators, further develop the app, and maintain the technology necessary to produce high-quality recordings.