NGbible.com: promoting projects & testing scriptures

Extracted text from ngbible_introduction_text.pdf:

What is ngbible.com? Ngbible.com is a space on the internet for wri5ng in your own language about your language and about the Bible in your language. More and more people in Nigeria, and Nigerians outside the country have computers and mobile phones that connect to the internet. Some people have used Facebook and other websites to promote the use of their language, but o?en people write about their language and people in English or Hausa or another foreign language. NGbible makes it as easy as possible to write in your own language so that people can read it easily on their computers and mobile phones. Its free to use and is a great way for you to help develop your language in this modern age. You can use it to help people in your area and elites who are scaFered across Nigeria and the world learn how to read your language. You can also share your work on the transla5on of the Bible. And because we know about the special leFers used in many Nigerian languages, we work hard to make sure they display correctly on anyones computer.

How did NGbible start? Some Bible translators from northern Nigeria asked how they could build a website to develop their language and encourage people to use it and to get interested in their Bible transla5on work. We started a small site and discovered some of the challenges that minority language authors can face when trying to use websites designed for Westerners on fast internet connec5ons. At the same 5me we no5ced that it is hard for minority language authors to publish and distribute anything because of the costs of prin5ng and the uncertainty of covering those costs. So very few Bible translators had a meaningful way of developing their crea5ve wri5ng skills and use of their language outside the actual Bible transla5on. Many more projects expressed an interest in bringing their languages into the internet age, and NGbible.com was born.

Who can use NGbible? How can I start? [Show the email they write, and the response I send.] Every language in Nigeria can have its own space on the site. You need to have an email address and some way of connec5ng to the internet yourself, even if that is going to an internet shop. If youre involved in a language development and Bible transla5on project, email us at info@ngbible.com. Tell us you want to open a site, tell us the language name you want to use, what the site =tle should be in your language and tell us what other organisa=ons you have been working with in your transla5on project

perhaps NBTT, The Seed Company, PABTEN, Lutheran Bible Translators or others. We will open your sec5on of the site and email you back a username and password. Keep these stored safely somewhere; they give you access to the site to add and change informa5on there. You can change the password later if you like. The email will also give you your login address. This is where you go to log in to or access your site to change it. Click on the address, enter your username and password, then you will enter the administra=on dashboard. The number of details might make you afraid at rst but you mainly need to focus on just two areas: posts and pages.

What should I do rst? The most important thing for your site is to write a friendly welcome message in your language (and perhaps a shorter explana5on in English or Hausa too) for the front page. You might explain the purpose of the website and tell people what you plan to publish there.

The second thing you should do is to write an explana5on of who you are, and give some way of people contac5ng you if they are interested in nding out more about your work. You need to type these messages using the correct alphabet for your language

with all the special vowels or consonants and tone marks that you normally use. If you are planning to use an internet shop, their computers might not have an easy way of typing your language, so it might be best to write your messages on your own computer, save them on a ash drive and then carry them to the internet shop like that. Then you can simply copy and paste what you have wriFen. We do want to nd beFer ways of helping you to write in your alphabet, so please tell us any sugges5ons you have and what you found dicult.

Adding rst content When you are ready to add your welcome message to the site, you Log in to the site as we men5oned before. See on the le? side there is a list beginning with Dashboard. Look for the Posts sec5on and click New Post. This will open a new page. Type the 5tle in the wide box at the top. Then click on the large box and type your message. When you have nished, click on the blue buFon Publish on the right side, and immediately what you have wriFen is published on the internet site! So, that was our welcome message. For the other about or contact page we do something similar. The dierence this 5me is that we will write a page. (I will explain the dierence between a post and a page in a moment.) Look on the le? side of the screen and nd the Pages sec5on. Click New Page in that sec5on. Then complete the 5tle and the main text area, just as you did before. Finally click Publish. Now, each 5me when you clicked Publish it added your informa5on to the website. If you want to change something that you have added, click on the Posts or Pages sec5on, on the le?. This will show you a list of all the Posts or Pages on your site. A Page is a more permanent place to write something than a Post. You can organise Pages into major sec5ons, with child pages underneath. We suggest that you use Posts for news and announcements, and Pages for anything bigger, like stories or guides to reading your language. In the list of pages and posts, when you move the mouse pointer over each page, you see dierent things you can do, including to trash (that means to remove) the post or page completely. But to open a post or page so that you can change it, just click on its 5tle. This will open the page exactly like when you wrote it and you can change anything you want. This 5me, when you want to keep the changes you have made, the Publish buFon has changed name to Update.

Removing standard post/page [Post/Page list: Trash] Every new site starts with one standard post and one standard page. These are just instruc5ons to you, so you must remove those pages as soon as possible because otherwise everyone will see them and they are wriFen in English not your language. So, go into the list of Pages (click the word Pages on the le? of the screen), nd the standard messages wriFen in English and click Trash. Then go into the list of Posts and click Trash beside the English message.

More than just text [Post editor: Insert] You can write a lot more than just text, though you need to be a liFle more experienced with computers to do this. You can add pictures, sound recordings, even videos. You can include books that people can print out too. When you are wri5ng a post or page, look for the buFons marked

Insert above the box. Click the rst to add a picture from your computer. You choose the picture from your computer, then it will move to NGbible and when it is ready, it will ask you for the 5tle of the picture. You can also say the size you want (I recommend medium) and whether you want the picture to be on the le?, right or middle of the page. Finally click Insert into Post and you will see your picture has been added. You can add a sound recording

maybe a recording of a chapter of the Bible

in just the same way, but it wont ask you for the size or posi5on. The sound recording must be an MP3 le. You can add a PDF or Word Document in the same way. Those are great for prin5ng, but not so easy to read on a mobile phone.

Interac=vity & comments [Post editor: Discussion] One very exci5ng thing you can do is to let readers make their own comments, whether on news ar5cles or on other resources you put on the site. Every post or page has a Discussion sec5on. Here you can choose whether you want to enable comments. When someone writes a comment, the site administrator must approve it before it will appear on the public site. This is because some5mes people might write adver5sing their own sites, or saying things which are not good for building good rela5onships on the community. Most of the 5me though comments are a great way to encourage people to get excited and involved.

Ideas: What can you put on the site? [Content] Use NGbible to prac5ce your crea5ve wri5ng. Remember that by prac5cing wri5ng you get more experience as a writer and give your community more reasons to prac5ce reading your language. You could write: tradi5onal stories, cultural informa5on everyday news informa5on about the Bible transla5on project some trial versions of the Bible

as a recording and as text and many other things.

Other things you can change [Seengs] You are in control of your site and responsible for all the content. Apart from the posts and pages, you can change many other things about your site: the 5tle and sub5tle the picture that appears at the top of the site informa5on that appears on the right You can even create more users and allow other people to write things without giving them complete control of the site.

Finally Finally, remember the main content of your NGbible site should be in your language. (There are many sites in English and quite a few in Hausa but this is for YOUR language.)

Remember that the purpose is to give you an easy and powerful way of publishing in your language, which should encourage you to write more and more in your own language so that you become a more experienced writer. It also gives your language a higher status and gives other people who speak your language a good reason to learn to read it, even before you print the whole Bible.

You might ask how much this costs. It costs almost nothing. It is free to open and use an account on NGbible.com so all you have to pay for is your internet connec5on, whether you go to an internet shop or use the internet on your phone or computer. And that cost is not very high. Perhaps you can choose someone in the commiFee or in your community who is knowledgable about computers to take responsibility for publishing things on your site. And then everyone else can write stories, books explaining how to read your language, or news, and ask the publisher to put them on your NGbible.com site. Remember, to nd out more and to see what other language communi5es have done, go to the website www.ngbible.com.