First Draft of the Jita New Testament

 

Hi friends, I finished typesetting the first draft of the New Testament in the Jita language. And I think it looks pretty good! It was a slow process, because I'm still learning how to do typesetting, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

One of the things that surprised me was the number of unique elements that occur on a printed page. For example, here's a page from the book of Luke,

There's page numbers, headers, footnotes, sections headings, parallel passage references, chapter numbers, and verse numbers. Each of those elements has its own style options. I had to manually format each of those elements so that the page looked good to the translators.

One of the things that gave me the most trouble was the tone marker on Jita verbs. When I first started typesetting, the tone marker was too close to some of the surrounding elements. It looked distracting and confusing. It took me a long time to identify and solve that problem.

So I sent the first draft to Neema, one of the Jita translators, so that she can review it and make sure everything looks good. While she's reviewing the first draft, I can start working on all the extra stuff that goes into the printed New Testament, like the title page, Introduction, Glossary, color pictures, and maps.

After Neema finishes reviewing the first draft, we will make any changes necessary, and then produce the second draft. We're getting closer to publishing the New Testament in Jita. Please keep praying for us!