Inuktitut Bible app available for free download

Another backlog item, as reported by the Iqaluit newspaper Nunatsiaq News, March 28, 2013 (links in original):

The Inuit language bible, produced in Inuktitut syllabics last June after 34 years of work, is now available for download online.

The Inuktitut Bible application can be downloaded for free on a number of devices, including computers, iPads, iPhones, iPods and android phones.

However, the app won’t work on older Blackberry smartphones, but it will work on computers and laptops.

The online version of the Inuktitut Bible took about a year to develop, because of the “unusual font” of Inuktitut, according to a spokesperson from the company that helped develop the app in Kitchener, Ontario.

Last June, the Inuktitut Bible was dedicated at the new St. Jude’s Cathedral in Iqaluit.

The cathedral’s dedication services featured the consecration of the Anglican Church’s new Inuktitut Bible, produced by a team lead by Bishop Benjamin Arreak.

Andrew Atagotaaluk, the former Bishop of the Arctic, had earlier praised the project, saying that for the first time, readers of syllabics could read all books of the Old and New Testament in the Inuit language.

The Inuktitut Bible also marked the first time in Canada that a translation was done by first-language speakers of Inuktitut rather than by missionaries.

The first draft of that Bible was completed after 23 years of collaboration between the Canadian Bible Society and the Diocese of the Arctic of the Anglican Church of Canada.

The online Inuktitut Bible can be downloaded here, by selecting Inuktitut from a pull-down menu.

I'm suspicious of anything coming from the Anglican Church of Canada, but if that's all that's available, so be it. If it took 34 years for this version of the Bible to be published, it's unlikely that another Inuktitut version will be coming out soon.