freococo/jw_myanmar_bible_dataset

📖 JW Myanmar Bible Dataset (New World Translation)

A richly structured, fully aligned dataset of the Myanmar (Burmese) Bible, translated by Jehovah's Witnesses from the New World Translation. This dataset includes 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,078 verses, each with chapter-level URLs and verse-level breakdowns.

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✨ Highlights

- 📚 66 Canonical Books (Genesis to Revelation)
- 🧩 1,189 chapters, 31,078 verses (as parsed from the JW.org Myanmar edition)
- 🔗 Includes original chapter URLs from [JW.org](https://www.jw.org)
- 🔤 Unicode Myanmar (Zawgyi-free)
- ✅ Cleaned of duplicate verse numbers and Myanmar numbering digits
- 🔎 Sorted CSV format

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🙏 Acknowledgments & Dedication

This dataset is a humble offering of thanks to the Myanmar Bible translators, the faithful team at JW.org, and the many unseen hands and hearts who have labored — not for fame, but for the flourishing of faith and understanding in the Burmese language.

• To the visionaries behind this translation, whose work stands as one of the greatest masterpieces in Myanmar spoken-style Bible translation
• To the translators who shaped Scripture into beautiful spoken Burmese
• To the scholars and spiritual leaders who preserved accuracy and meaning
• To the developers, linguists, and archivists who helped digitize and protect this work

We honor your effort. We walk in your legacy.

"May every verse carry the warmth of those who gave it voice — and may it continue to comfort, teach, and inspire generations to come."

🔍 Personal note: I have not received any funding, sponsorship, or compensation of any kind for this project. I’m simply a language enthusiast — perhaps as obsessed with words as others are with music, puzzles, or coffee. This dataset was compiled out of deep passion for linguistic beauty and respect for Myanmar culture and Scripture.

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🔬 Purpose of This Dataset

This dataset is provided for non-commercial, educational and AI research purposes only. Some potential uses include:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Burmese
• Machine Translation (MT)
• Theology & Religious Text Analysis
• Interfaith Comparative Studies
• Myanmar Transliteration & Orthographic Research
• Digital Humanities Projects

For commercial or redistribution purposes, please contact the Jehovah’s Witnesses official site for proper permission. This dataset is distributed under a non-commercial FAIR USE guideline for academic and research purposes.

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🌍 Why the Bible?

The Bible remains:

• The most printed book in human history
• The most translated text into global languages
• A central text in theology, literature, linguistics, and philosophy

Despite its widespread reach, Myanmar-language translations are relatively underrepresented in the open-source NLP community. This dataset seeks to bridge that gap.

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🧠 On Myanmar Transliteration Practices

In our humble opinion, this Myanmar Bible translation excels in natural spoken style, clarity, and spiritual tone. However, one point that deserves thoughtful critique is its transliteration of foreign names (places, people, etc.).

🧭 Why This Matters

Myanmar's Buddhist linguistic tradition demonstrates remarkable sensitivity and intelligence in phonetic adaptation — especially when dealing with sacred or formal terminology. The choices are often not just about transliteration but about cultural harmony, aesthetic tone, and oral dignity.

For example:

• 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka is rendered as သီရိလင်္ကာ, not the phonetically closer စရီလန်ကာ.

  • Why? Because လန် (as in လန်ကျ) carries negative or crude connotations in Burmese. သိရိ invokes refinement and sacredness, aligning with classical Buddhist stylistics.

• 📜 Sutta (Pali: Sutta) becomes သုတ္တံ rather than a literal စုတ်တ or စုတ္တ.

  • This avoids the syllable စုတ်, which has crude associations in Burmese (e.g., စုတ်ပြတ်, စုတ်ပဲ့).
  • သုတ္တံ feels solemn, poetic, and phonetically smooth, reinforcing its liturgical role.

In contrast, transliterations for non-Buddhist or Western religious terms often lack this refined tuning:

• ✝️ Christian becomes ခရစ်ယာန် or ခရစ်ယန် — not ခရစ်ရှန်, which would better reflect the original “Christian”.
  • The suffix ယာန် is not common in Burmese phonology and can resemble terms like ရန် (conflict), unintentionally shifting tone or connotation.

🧩 Implication: The Buddhist tradition in Myanmar has carefully curated a phonetic aesthetic that merges respect, clarity, and sonority — something that could inspire similar intentionality in transliterating terms from other world religions.

💡 Why Include This in the README?

Because this transliteration issue is not just a religious matter — it reflects linguistic fairness, phonetic awareness, and how religious or cultural dominance shapes what sounds “right” or “strange” in the target language.

As Myanmar continues developing AI tools, speech synthesis, translation models, and NLP pipelines — transliteration matters.

We hope this dataset encourages deeper discussion on:

• Culturally-sensitive translation
• Improving AI transliteration models
• Learning from Myanmar Buddhist linguistic legacy

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📂 Dataset Structure

| Field         | Description                        |
|---------------|------------------------------------|
| book          | Book name (in Myanmar)             |
| chapter       | Chapter number                     |
| verse         | Verse number                       |
| verse_text    | Cleaned Myanmar verse              |
| chapter_url   | Official JW.org chapter link       |

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🛡 License

License: Other
License Name: Non-commercial FAIR USE for AI, Theology & Linguistic Research

This dataset is a derivative work of content provided by Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW.org) for educational purposes. No ownership is claimed. All rights reserved by the original publishers.

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📣 Final Note

This is offered with deep respect for the linguistic beauty of the Myanmar language and the cultural value of the Bible. If you find mistakes or wish to contribute corrections, feel free to open an issue or fork the dataset.

🕊️ May this inspire better tools, deeper faith, and respectful understanding across beliefs.

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📌 Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, project, or application, please cite it as:

@misc{jw_myanmar_bible_2025,
  title        = {JW Myanmar Bible Dataset},
  author       = {freococo},
  year         = {2025},
  url          = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/freococo/jw_myanmar_bible_dataset},
  note         = {Verse-aligned Myanmar Bible dataset sourced from JW.org for research and linguistic purposes},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/freococo/jw_myanmar_bible_dataset}}
}