TaBiThA: The Bible Translators Assistant (formerly TBTA)
AaBiThA is a software system that can be used to produce draft translations of Scripture in a language that does not yet have the Bible. These drafts convey the meaning of each Bible verse in the target language, but still need to be edited for clarity and naturalness.
Additional Description
Normally, it is up to translators to produce draft translations, which can be a long and difficult process. With TBTA, the drafts are created in a fraction of the time, and the translation team can move quickly to the review stage.
The TaBiThA software works with specially designed digital templates of each book of the Bible. First, a target language is analyzed to gather important grammatical information, such as sentence structure and parts of speech. Then this information is entered into TaBiThA and applied to the templates to create the draft of each book.
TaBiThA is fast. Using TaBiThA to simplify the drafting process could result in incredible time savings – a New Testament translation could be completed in approximately six years instead of 10, and an Old Testament translation in eight years instead of 13.
TaBiThA is consistent. By using a template, the drafts produced are more uniform and the number of exegetical errors in the text is reduced. This makes the review process easier and more efficient.
TaBiThA is versatile. In addition to Scripture, the TaBiThA software can be used to produce draft translations of a variety of other materials in the target language, such as health, development, and human rights information.