Translation Team, Powering Ahead

The Bible translation project is now in full swing, with the translation team working through multiple chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. But this project is about much more than taking words from one language and putting them into another. It is about giving a whole community the opportunity to hear, read and live out God’s Word in the language they naturally speak.

For the past few generations, since the gospel arrived in this tribe, believers have had to read the Bible in another language. Through conversations within their communities, they have then helped one another understand and internalise what they have read in their own language.

This matters because these people live surrounded by different languages, some more intelligible to them than others. While these languages may be geographically close, the differences can be significant—ranging from something comparable to the difference between English and Flemish, through to English and Farsi. Speaking to someone in a related language is not necessarily the same as speaking in the language of their heart.

Local conversation across languages has therefore been an essential part of developing church leaders. Language affects everything: mission, as leaders more easily explain the gospel to people in their community; families, as parents raise and disciple their children; and church life, as believers teach, encourage and help one another grow.

Our collaborative translation project, God willing, will substantially change this dynamic. The goal is not simply to produce a completed Bible, but to produce a text that the community already knows, trusts and has helped shape. This means that when the translation is completed, its adoption can be as seamless as possible.