Introduction: BasicBibleReading.com
We read portions of the Christian scriptures from the Bible In Basic English. It is a free, non-sectarian resource to aid in understanding the scriptures.
Bible in Basic English: Translation History. The Bible in Basic English was translated by Professor Samuel Henry Hooke (1874-1968), an English scholar and Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Studies at the University of London. The BBE was printed in 1965 by Cambridge Press in England. Published without any copyright notice and distributed in America, this work fell immediately and irretrievably into the public domain in the United States.
Translation Method. In an effort to simplify the text, Professor Hooke and his team limited the vocabulary to CK Ogden’s Basic English vocabulary of 850 words which is said to be able to give the sense of anything which may be said in English. One hundred words that were helpful to understand poetry were added, along with 50 “Bible” words. Does it work? The Bible in Basic English strives to simplify the Bible so that more people worldwide can read and understand the text. By using the Basic English vocabulary, this goal is accomplished. The BBE is certainly straightforward and simple.
Who’s actually reading to us? BasicBibleReading.com (BBR) uses the latest speech synthesis engines to generate the sound files. This allows the creating of mp3 files with no performance royalties. This is important to keeping this service available at low overhead expense. We change up voice synthesis engines to break up monotony. While this provides mostly predictable consistency, it does still have a slightly ‘robotic’ cadence and sometimes pronounces words in an alternative; especially words with 2 common enunciations.
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