Thanks to Peter Suber for calling attention to Peter Kirby, Open Access Translation (The OAT Bible), Christian Origins, August 7, 2005. Excerpt:
TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) are popular for Bible translations, so I’ve come up with one. The “Open Access Translation” (OAT) Bible. It would be the first Bible to be translated with a Creative Commons license. The question is–which license? The question is whether we would want the translator to be able to add this to her CV, in which case we would have to go with a “No Derivatives-By Attribution” license, or whether we would want people to be able to modify the Bible for their own purposes. For the Open Scrolls Project, J. Davila suggested that I go with the “No Derivatives-By Attribution” license, and I agreed to this. This way, all the changes to be made to the Bible could be suggested on a single website, where they could be reviewed by the general editor(s) and the editor(s) for the particular biblical book. The main contributors to each book’s translation would get credit and could know that their work would not be mangled. Nonetheless, the translation could be freely copied and printed at no charge if kept intact. In order to make such a translation, three things are necessary, or at least desirable –volunteer translators, open access translation software, and some funding (to pay the general editor? to pay a modicum to all active translators? to promote the project and the result? to legitimate the effort?). Active volunteer translators, and even moreso competent ones and excellent editors for quality control, will be the hardest to come by. Funding, therefore, could be a way to solve that problem. But who would do the funding? The easiest part would be open access translation software –because I would be happy to write it.
