History

Putting the U into USFM

The arrival of affordable microcomputers encouraged many people to develop technology for Bible translation. Standard Formatting Markup (SFM) emerged as a popular, loose format among Bible translators. The basic, backslash-based syntax was used in many different ways, within United Bible Societies (UBS) and beyond.

In 2002 UBS created a working group to produce a clear specification for one SFM dialect that would facilitate the sharing of Scripture content between teams, organizations and technologies. That specification became Unified Standard Formatting Markup (USFM).

The Paratext Ecosystem

In parallel with the rise of USFM, the Paratext Scripture translation tool has gradually become the reference software for Bible translation. Paratext itself is a desktop application, but it is now part of an ecosystem that includes the Paratext registry, as well as an archiving server for project, which enables translation teams to collaborate and to track progress. Various technologies take advantage of this ecosystem, eg Publishing Assistant and Glyssen.

Every Tribe Every Nation and the Digital Bible Library

Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) is a global initiative to bring together major stakeholders in Bible translation, with the goal of creating translations of Scripture in every spoken language in the world by 2033. The Digital Bible Library (DBL) is one key component of the ETEN, providing an archiving and licensing platform for Scripture. DBL is oriented toward publication, in contrast to the Paratext translation ecosystem. Text translations are stored as USX (the XML expression of USFM) and metadata is stored as an XML document. DBL is now part of the publishing toolchain of many organizations including YouVersion and Biblesearch.

New Media, New Ecosystems

Initially, DBL stored text entries which were derived from Paratext projects. Audio recordings were soon added, with their own metadata XML schema. DBL also stores print-oriented entries, typically produced by Publishing Assistant, as well as braille and sign language video entries. Rather than produce and maintain a growing number of schema, DBL adopted a generic metadata model that could be extended to incorporate new types of entry. That generic schema was DBL Metadata 2.0, which was rapidly patched to 2.1 and then 2.2.

While Paratext will continue to upload much of the text content of DBL, uploading of other entry types is now handled by Nathanael, an application developed by the DBL team. Bible text editors such as Autographa and translationStudio are being developed to meet the needs of teams with modest language and technology skills. Groups such as unfoldingWord, Wycliffe Associates and Faith Comes By Hearing are developing ecosystems for users of their own systems. This is the context within which the ETEN Bible Tools committee identified a need for data exchange formats, leading to Scripture Burrito.

Building on DBL Metadata

The ETEN Bible Tools Portability Subcommittee looked at various options and decided to base its work on the “DBL Bundle”, which consists of DBL metadata XML plus resources such as USX or MP3 files. This format has already been shown to work for thousands of entries. The subcommittee also identified areas which required significant work. The DBL origins of the first Scripture Burrito specification are therefore clear, but there are multiple breaking changes.

USFM and USX for Scripture Text

Much of the Bible translation world uses USFM, which is familiar to Bible translators, but which requires bespoke parsing tools, and which can be ambiguous in some circumstances. Also, USX contains machine-readable reference information that cannot be represented in USFM at this time. Valid USFM can be round-tripped to USX. USX cannot be round-tripped to USFM without losing the machine-readable references. Invalid USFM may not have an equivalent representation in USX. Paratext currently uses both USFM and USX internally at various points.

For these reasons and more, the current specification supports both USFM and USX. The suggestion is that

  • USFM be used for translations in progress, and

  • USX be used for valid content, orientated towards publication (incremental or otherwise).

Early Work

The 0.1.0 specification was based on an XML schema for metadata with a JSON representation. However, the goal for 0.2.0 was to switch to JSON Schema as the only representation of the metadata. This transition was completed with the 0.2.0-beta.2 release.