OBT Verse Timing Files
Verse timing files (also called verse delineation files) are small, but they have a large impact — helping your translation to be used in more ways.
obt verse timing files
for Bible translation teams
Verse Timing Training
Verse timing files (also called verse delineation files) are small, but they have a large impact — helping your translation to be used in more ways.
🤖 AI verse timing tools work by matching audio against a written text. An oral Bible translation has no written text — so this approach is built differently, for OBT.
What verse timing files unlock
Story View
Listeners in the ethnē app hear Scripture as one continuous story, Genesis to Revelation, in the language they think and pray in.
Gospel Film in your language
Timing data makes it possible to make Scripture-based films into your language.
Owned by your team
The timing files belong to your translation team. Share and reuse them however you need.
Beyond the ethnē app
Files go to your translation team to use anywhere the work travels next — such as speech-to-text drafting or showing verse markers wherever your audio or video plays.
Get verse timing for your OBT translation
Partners tell us what used to take them many hours of painstaking, manual work now takes about as long as listening to the audio. Contact us and we'll get your team trained and set up. We'd love to hear about the work you're doing.
Step 1: Watch
Three short videos. Watch them in order — each one builds on the last.
Video 1 of 3
Getting started
A tour of the ethnē app and how to unlock the timestamp feature for your translation.
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Video 2 of 3
Verse stamping
This is where the work happens. Watch how a verse gets stamped — made especially for an oral translation without a written text.
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Video 3 of 3
Advanced features
Adjusting playback speed, making corrections, and skipping over audio that isn't Scripture — everything you need to work confidently on your own.
Open full screen ↗Want verse timing for your OBT translation?
Partners tell us what used to take them many hours of painstaking, manual work now takes about as long as listening to the audio. Contact us and we'll get your team trained and set up. We'd love to hear about the work you're doing.
Step 2: Practice
Now practice what you watched — either with your translation or the English demo packet. Play around with it and don't worry about making mistakes. Even after you submit, if you realize something needs fixing, correct it and submit again. No problem.
- ▶️ Stamp 15 verses, start to finish.
- 🌉 Stamp three more verses. Then practice the bridged-verse case: mark the next two verses as bridged. The goal is knowing both when to do this and how.
- ❌ Delete the fourth verse, redo it, and stamp a few more.
- ⏩ Speed up and slow down the audio, and stamp to the end of the chapter.
- ✂️ When a chapter opens with audio not found in the text — for example, a spoken "Chapter 2" — mark that portion using the exclusion function.
- ↩️ Stamp a few more verses. Then practice a correction: adjust the timestamp for verse 2.
- ✅ Confirm you can send in the finished data.
Works without internet. Stamp verses offline and send your data when you're back online.
