Bettering the Better Bibles Blog
I spent most of the weekend tweaking the colors and fonts on this blog. I hope it is easier on the eyes to read now. I learned quite a bit about modifying css code on blog pages. I had worked with fairly plain HTML code for webpages before, but not css code. But there is much yet to learn, and I'm afraid I don't have the time for it. Our tribal translation project takes priority these days. We are digitally recording all of the Scripture which has been translated into the Cheyenne language over the past 30 years that we have been with this project. The recordings are coming out great and we are getting much affirmative feedback from Cheyennes who listen to them. We are able to easily put the digital recordings on CDs for distribution. It is not much more difficult to copy CDs to cassette tapes for those who do not yet have CD players.
It's interesting to begin blogging. I have worked with websites for many years but I only started a blog less than a month ago.
I really do hope that this blog will become a resource center where people can post ideas for improving English Bible versions. I am just as passionate that English speakers deserve to have Bibles which are in high quality English as I am that the millions of people around the world who have no Bibles deserve to have the Bible translated accurately and well into good quality forms of their languages, more than 3,000 languages remaining without any Bibles. What a task! It will take the involvement of people from all over the world to get the task done. The traditional missionary sending nations cannot complete the task soon enough. It is so gratifying to see more and more people from other parts of the world becoming missionaries and involving themselves in the job of bringing God's Word to people in their own language.
Have a good week!
It's interesting to begin blogging. I have worked with websites for many years but I only started a blog less than a month ago.
I really do hope that this blog will become a resource center where people can post ideas for improving English Bible versions. I am just as passionate that English speakers deserve to have Bibles which are in high quality English as I am that the millions of people around the world who have no Bibles deserve to have the Bible translated accurately and well into good quality forms of their languages, more than 3,000 languages remaining without any Bibles. What a task! It will take the involvement of people from all over the world to get the task done. The traditional missionary sending nations cannot complete the task soon enough. It is so gratifying to see more and more people from other parts of the world becoming missionaries and involving themselves in the job of bringing God's Word to people in their own language.
Have a good week!
posted by Wayne Leman at 7:23 AM
3 Comments:
Site looks great. Learning to use CSS now will save much time later (I learned that the hard way). Blessings.
One thing about the logic of this blog's arrangement: As I see it, you're using the initial blog entries for the various versions as the organizing principle for discussions you expect to take place in the comments. However, if this becomes a serious venue for discussing individual verses in the various versions, it will get unruly fast. It seems better to me to post a new, separate blog entry for each verse or passage you wish to point out. That way, the discussion for one verse will be self contained and easy to find and follow up with. As far as organizing goes, you could index each entry according to which version it pertains to. People who are interested in a certain version would click a link saying (for example) "Show me all posts pertaining to the NASB." As it stands now, it would be hard to perpetuate discussion of a verse that appears early in the comments if there are many comments pertaining to other verses in between. It's as if you're recreating discussion forum using blog comments. The problem is, in blog comments one can't respond to other comments specifically.
Just a thought. I hope this goes well because it is evident that you are trying to conduct a discussion in a much more tasteful, decent, and informed way than some of the other Bible translation blogs, which seem, in my opinion, to be more interested in generating heat than light.
You quoted me and then said as follows:
"The problem is, in blog comments one can't respond to other comments specifically."
"I'm not sure what you mean by this, since there is a comment field at the bottom of every blog entry, so that anyone else can add a comment. And that comment can, theoretically, be about any previous comment under the main blog entry."
Sorry for the imprecise language. What I meant is that the comments of a blog do not provide a means for creating a distinct conversation thread other than by quoting (as we're doing here). I suspect that if other folks had chimed in on a few other topics between my initial post, your initial response, and now this response of mine, we would find it somewhat frustrating to try to read through to find the string of our conversation. We might even overlook a comment or two resulting in redundant questioning and answering.
All that aside, I understand what you are trying to accomplish here, and I see how it doesn't quite fit the discussion forum model. As far as I can tell, the great thing about a blog is the control it provides. I personally grow weary of reading discussion forums because of so many off the wall threads. One idea you might consider is to function as an editor who accepts or rejects contributions. Set a word limit so that you do not become burdened by imprecise ramblings. Then, let's say, someone could submit a 100 word question or criticism of how a certain version has handled a verse. If you deem it worthy of consideration, then it gets posted with proper attribution. Sounds like work, I know, but then it might not amount to all that much after all.
Again, just a thought.
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