Additional Arabic Versions of the Bible Needed

[William T. McVay]

Since 2008, there has been an Accordance module for the most popular Arabic translation of the Bible, the Smith and Van Dyke (ARAB or Arabic Bible). This was a very good start, but I think there is good reason to move forward from it. It has significant readability issues for its readers, so its usefulness is limited, according to many experts. It also lacks Strong's numbers. Therefore, I request that another modern Arabic translation be prepared as a module with Strong's numbers and published for Accordance.

 

There have been multiple efforts to displace the Smith and Van Dyke version with something better, and so there are now several other modern Arabic versions or the Bible or of portions of it. Here is a list of likely translations for evangelical usage, according to the Wikipedia article "Bible translations into Arabic".

 

1. Book of Life, an interpretive translation (aka New Arabic Version) (1992)

2. Today's Arabic Version (aka Good News Arabic or the Ecumenical Version) (1992)

3. The Noble Book (aka Sharif Bible) (2000)

4. The True Meaning of the Gospel of Christ (Gospels and Acts only) (2008)

 

Since "The Noble Book" is the newest and simplest full Bible, and "Book of Life" is currently the most widely-distributed in print, I think they would be the best choices to start with.

 

Please also see my request for Strong's numbers in these modules. Thank you.

[theblackbluejay]

I would greatly appreciate a tagged Arabic bible, regardless of which Arabic translation is used.

[William T. McVay]

I would greatly appreciate a tagged Arabic bible, regardless of which Arabic translation is used.

Hi, David,

 

Thank you for replying to my topic. I was beginning to feel lonely. I have a question for you.

 

Background: Accordance text modules have three kinds of metadata, according to whether they are original language or translated -

1. Strong's or Goodrich-Kohlenburger's number keys for translated words, which link them to corresponding Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic originals

2. Grammatical/morphological tags for original language words, which indicate their grammatical inflections

3. Syntactical tags for original language words, which indicate their etymological relationships

 

Which of these three interests you? Since you are referring to Arabic translation, I reason that you want keys to link Arabic with the original languages, hence Strong's or Goodrich-Kohlenburger's numbers. If this is correct, would you please reply to my other topic, "Arabic Versions of the Bible with Strong's Numbers"? It will help build interest for what we both want to have our requests together.

 

Tom McVay

[Niko]

I don't know these versions, but for the love of Arabic, I would support them most probably.

 

I would also be interested in more older Arabic translations. As far as I know, Saadia made one of the oldest?

[William T. McVay]

I have looked into this further. There are online and mobile app presentations of both the New Arabic Version (aka, Book of Life)(https://www.bible.com/bible/101/jhn.1.nav) and the Sharif Arabic Bible (https://www.bible.com/bible/153/jhn.1.sab) . Obviously there must be digital texts behind those, so much of the work has already been done. The NAV is published by the International Bible Society, so gaining access should not be difficult. I would expect the same for the Sharif, which has its own support group.

Edited December 7, 2015 by William T. McVay

[William T. McVay]

As I just promised in a reply to another topic, I hereby commit to buy a modern Arabic Bible text module for Accordance, if Oaktree provides it. As a  sign of good faith, I have already bought a copy of the Smith & Van Dyke module "Arabic," and I intend to use it in User Tools I write for lessons until something more approachable becomes available.

 

Would you please do the same, kind reader? It will help assure our friends at Oaktree Software that a new Arabic Bible text module will be worth their investment.