Bible Transmediation and Quality of Scripture-based Media

Bible Transmediation is the adaptation of written biblical texts to different media products, including stories, audio recordings, videos and apps. Its goal is to produce Scripture in different media so that audiences can understand it as accurately and as clearly as possible. Transmediation succeeds well when the meaning that specific audiences gain from media products corresponds with the biblical meaning that Bible transmediators intend to communicate. Transmediation is markedly different from translation, since we must transform a text into a different medium. For this process to happen in an informed and deliberate way, we need to know about media characteristics. These are the different parts of media that communicate information and are meaningful to a medium’s audiences. In a first step we should identify the media characteristics of a target media product that are absent or differ from the biblical text. Then we need to realize and flesh out these media characteristics in a way that maintains the intended meaning for specific audiences. Paying attention to the process of transmediation and the media characteristics of specific media products should increase the communicative quality of Scripture-based media.