Which translation is this?
The World English Bible — the WEB. If a line sounded familiar and you couldn't place it, this is why.
What the World English Bible is
The WEB is a modern-English revision of the American Standard Version of 1901, itself a careful descendant of the King James tradition. Work began in 1994, the whole Bible was complete by 2020, and its editors placed the text in the public domain — anyone may read it aloud, print it, quote it or build on it, without permission or fee. The name itself is a trademark of the publisher, ebible.org, which is how they keep altered texts from wearing it; the words are free.
It is a formal, word-for-word translation rather than a paraphrase. The Old Testament follows the standard Hebrew text, the New Testament the Greek Majority Text. Out of the Cloud reads the standard 66-book edition, in American English.
How it sounds next to the ones you know
Close. The WEB comes from the same Hebrew and Greek as the King James, the NIV and the ESV, and it keeps to the same order of words wherever modern English allows, so most verses land within a word or two of the version in your memory. Genesis begins, in the WEB:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
A listener once heard formless and empty and took it for the NIV; it is the WEB’s own line, arrived at from the same Hebrew. The best-known verse in the New Testament reads:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Only born where the King James has only begotten — that is the scale of the difference you will hear, most of the time.
The one difference you will notice
In the Old Testament, the WEB writes God’s personal name as Yahweh where most English Bibles print Lord in capitals. Both stand for the same four Hebrew letters; the WEB’s editors chose to render the name rather than the title. So in Exodus you will hear “Yahweh’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire” where you may remember “the angel of the Lord.” It takes an evening to get used to, and then it is simply the voice of the book.
Why this translation
Because it can be given away. Recording a Bible and playing it to anyone, free, for as long as the app exists, is only possible with a text that belongs to everyone; most modern translations are under copyright, and reading one aloud in an app means a licence, a fee, and terms that can change. The WEB asks nothing. It is also a good translation — readable aloud, faithful to the original, and close enough to the familiar ones that nothing in a sermon or a study group will sound foreign after a week of listening.
Where the words come from
The text in the app is taken directly from the publisher’s own files at ebible.org, chapter by chapter, and the recordings are made from that text. Nothing is paraphrased, and nothing you hear in the reading is generated. When the companion quotes a verse in conversation, it quotes the passage in front of it — the same text — not a version from memory; and where other translations differ on a line that matters, it will say so.
How the listening and the conversation work, if you have not seen it yet.