Documentation

Adding translations

Downloading free Bible translations from within the app, adding a file you already have, and what to do about copyrighted translations.

The Bible library

Press F2, or the 📖 button in the top bar. That opens the Bible library, which is where every translation comes in and goes out.

Downloading

Open the Adaugă / Add tab and pick a language. Every free Bible in it is listed with its verse count and its copyright line. Select one, or hold Ctrl and select several, and press Download and install.

A whole Bible takes about ten seconds on a normal connection. The app stays open while it works, a progress bar shows where it is up to, and each translation appears in the dropdowns the moment it lands — there is no restart and no rebuild step.

If you know the name, type it in the search box instead of hunting through languages: fidela, king james, berean.

Installing a file you already have

Instalate / Installed tab → Install from a file…. Point it at the file and it reads it, checks it is a whole Bible, and installs it. Any of these work, on their own or inside a zip:

  • JSON (66 books in order)
  • Zefania XML
  • OSIS XML — both the container and milestone encodings
  • USFM — a folder or zip with one file per book
  • SoftProjector .spb modules

The file’s own title and copyright are used where it carries them; otherwise the filename fills the gaps. A file named ro_something is Romanian; so is one whose title says “Romanian”.

Removing one

Select it in the Installed tab and press Remove. The last remaining translation cannot be removed — an app with no Bible in it will not open.

Where they are kept

In the database beside the program, so translations travel with a copy of the folder moved to another PC. If that folder is read-only — a locked-down machine, Program Files — the database moves to your own user folder instead, once, and lives there.

What “free” means here

The catalogue comes from eBible.org — about 1,550 translations, 1,294 of them marked redistributable, each carrying its own copyright line. Only the redistributable ones are downloaded, and the copyright travels with the file into the credits.

There are 29 complete English Bibles, 21 across German, Spanish, French and Italian — and only 2 in Romanian, which is why Romanian churches usually end up asking a Bible society directly.

Translations that are not free

The Add tab lists them too, greyed out, with the publisher’s copyright line and no download button. That is deliberate: hiding them would be tidier and less honest. If a church wants a text it cannot have for free, the first useful thing is knowing that it exists and who holds it.

See supported file formats for what each format looks like.

Choosing which two are projected

The two dropdowns at the top of the passage panel. They list every translation loaded; the top one is the first language, the bottom one the second. The ⇅ button swaps them.

Copyrighted translations

NKJV, ESV, NASB and the revised Romanian editions are not in any open catalogue, and converting a file from another program does not make a legal copy. The honest routes are:

  1. Use a free equivalent — the Berean Standard Bible is modern, formally equivalent and public domain.
  2. Ask the publisher. If they grant permission, their text can be shipped encrypted and non-exportable, credited on screen and in the credits.