My Project

My goal is to create a Wiki-based project where Biblical Language scholars (such as professors) can come together to work on a pair of new translations of the Bible in English. I want to produce a literal/word-for-word type translation and also a dynamic/smooth translation, both available in some sort of Creative Commons license that enables anyone to use them. I want this to be accepted in the academic world (unlike Wikipedia) so I need to restrict edits to only those who are authorized to do so (and those people would be scholarly people.) I need support for multiple sets of footnotes (one, perhaps using numbers, to show textual variations and another, perhaps using letters, to show alterate ways that a particular word/phrase could be translated.) I also need to be able to export this project so that it can be used.
Potential exporting needs:
Daily or weekly "builds" so that 'outsiders' (those who are not part of the group of academics working on the project) can see out progress and help to "open beta" the project (but in read-only mode.)
Conversion into a format that could be used with e-document readers (for distributing the text.)
Exporting in a format that can be used on websites like www.biblegateway.com


Of course, I also need to find out about ways to host all this and that sort of thing. I am a college student with a dream, not a financier. Perhaps I could scrape together a server and keep it as some sort of VPN intranet or something so that I don't have to worry about web hosting fees. I generally need to keep costs (including maintainance costs) to a minimum since I'll only be funded by donations (likely primarily from my own pocket until I can get the word out and perhaps get some donors.) I need to know what sort of server would I need to host project (in terms of CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.)
Keep in mind that this is my first real step down the path of this project - I have not talked with any professors or scholars yet. At this point, I'm seeing if the idea is even feasible. It just seems to me that if we can get people worldwide to work on translating projects like Wikipedia that surely we should be able to produce a free-to-use translation of the Bible that is of high scholarly quality.

My Links

• BeginnersStartHere - view a short introductory presentation on Foswiki for beginners
• WelcomeGuest - starting points on Foswiki
• UsersGuide - complete Foswiki documentation, Quick Start to Reference
• Sandbox - try out Foswiki on your own
• MichaelWhiteSandbox - just for me *