Plain English Version Bible

An English translation of the Bible for Indigenous Australians

The Plain English Version (PEV) is an English translation of the Bible designed for Indigenous Australians whose mother tongue is an Aboriginal language.

This translation is still in progress. Text and audio will be added to the app as it is made available.

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READ ONLINE:

Go to https://aboriginalbibles.org.au/english-plain/

PRINTED COPIES:

Several books have been published in printed form by the Bible League under the name ‘Simplified English Version’ and can be found on their website in the Indigenous Australians category. https://bl.org.au/product-category/indigenous-australians/

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METHODOLOGY

This English translation of the Bible seeks to use language features that are common to most Australian Aboriginal languages. This affects the vocabulary, grammar and rhetorical devices. It follows a meaning based translation principle so that it seeks to convey the same meaning as the original authors conveyed to the original readers.

Language features include:

- No passive voice, since most Indigenous Australian languages do not have passive voice.

- Verbs and adjectives instead of most abstract nouns, since abstract nouns are rare in Australian languages.

- Shorter sentences to conform to the grammars of Australian languages.

- Where the original text has implicit information that would not be obvious to the target audience, that information has been made explicit.

- Modified vocabulary, according to what is commonly understood by the target audience.

- Where the original text has used figurative language that could be taken as literal by the target audience the meaning has been stated.