The first aspect of the mission of this website is to encourage and make believers aware of the opportunities there are to use their language skills for the purpose of translating Biblical resources to be then spread on the Internet.
One might ask, “Why encourage the translation of sermon resources and not the Bible itself?” Because the scholarly skills required to translate the Bible are far beyond that of those that are required to translate a sermon. Yes, there many languages in the world that do not yet have the Bible in their own language; we want to encourage that translation work to continue to happen in every language. Yet there are many languages that have the Bible translated, but lack solid sermons that expound Biblical truths. This is the need that we are trying to meet – to encourage believers in those countries to translate Biblical resources and take advantage of the printing press of the Internet to advance the Gospel. This is not to discourage the translation of the Bible, but there are few who have the Greek and Hebrew language abilities to translate the Bible, and may God raise up more of those laborers, yet there are many common people who know another language proficiently enough to translate a sermon into their own language.
Secondly, our mission is to equip believers with the tools to do the whole process of transcribing, timecoding, translating, and publishing video sermons. As is often with learning anything new, it can initially seem intimidating and difficult to put subtitles onto a video and upload it. However, the process is not that complicated and our free training is meant to teach someone how to go from start to finish in the process. This is in order that the translated videos might be sent out on the “swift horses” (Esther 8:10) of the Internet to the ends of the earth.
Maybe you yourself have come across this website because you have heard a sermon that made an impact on your life and you are wanting to translate it so that others might view the same sermon? Even if you are 60 years old and have limited computer knowledge, we are wanting to remove any obstacles preventing you from doing this translation work and show you the tools it takes to do this most important work.
You don’t have to do this full time or start your own ministry. Most ministries out there see the value of translators helping in this most important task. The hope is our web site will encourage and equip you to come alongside them in this work. If the ministry, outside of your local church, has no involvement in translation work, then encourage them in this direction.
Consider a summary of the process:
- Type a transcript of the video →
- time code and set the timings of the captions →
- translate the captions into another language →
- embed or hardcode the captions to the video →
- upload the video.
The one step in this process that is most vital is the step of translating the text. Anyone else can do all of the other steps, but the most vital step of the process is a person who is proficient in two languages and able to translate the message. Yet how many out there have this gift and ability but due to all of the other steps that are required, they cannot bring to fruition the final step of upload?
Ministries will come and go. The process will change and morph over time, from the printing press, to what we have now, to something more advanced in the future. What we don’t want is the knowledge and answers to “How” to do this to not be widely available. We must do all we can to encourage the use of the Internet to evangelize the globe with the Biblical Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Why Videos?
First, the emphasis of this site is on the translation of any Biblical resources, whether a video or not. However, the process of completing an article is rather simple from a technical aspect and therefore requires less training. So, therefore, our emphasis on training is specifically upon video media.
Second, videos are a popular means of sharing in our generation. Yes, even with subtitles that a person has to read! The Shocking Youth Message by Paul Washer, with Portuguese subtitles, has 2,456,087 views as of April 2017.
