Wycliffe UK Director Eddie Arthur was speaking at the Kingdom Come event in Belfast on Monday, where he gave an introduction to Wycliffe Bible Translators. The 7-minute talk isn’t a standard description of what the organisation does, or what its goals are, or why you should support it… take a look below to see why Bible translation is something that we believe is important:
It was amazing: representatives of significant Christian organisations all gathered together to talk about Bible translation. For the last few days, a couple of us from Wycliffe UK have had the amazing privilege of sitting in meetings in Ouagadougou, where Christian leaders from a number of organisations were planning how to translate the Bible into the remaining languages of Burkina Faso.
There are a number of things which really stood out for me as the group worked through what they wanted to achieve and what actions they would need to take in order to get there:
The aim is not simply to translate Bibles; the different ministries represented in the room were concerned that the Scriptures would be used in written and aural form. The way in which the translation is started, carried out and finished must take this need for long term impact into account.
The group were also concerned for a holistic ministry. Bible translation, literacy work and language development provide an opportunity for socio-economic development and this is a part of the overall plan.
I was also struck by the importance of minority language work to all sorts of Christian ministry in Burkina Faso. There is lots of work in the field of HIV-Aids awareness, but this only has a limited effect because the materials are only available in the larger languages. The broad plan for Bible translation takes into account the need to make these materials available in all of the languages of the country. The Director of GBU, the main student ministry (a sister of UCCF in the UK) insisted that although university students read French well, they still need access to the Bible in their own language so that they can be witnesses to their families.
It was a huge encouragement to see the dedication and Godly ambition of our Burkinabé colleagues.
We were in Burkina researching a project that can be sponsored by BibleFresh in the UK. You will be able to read more about this on the BibleFresh site over the coming months.
In case you ever thought Wycliffe was an organisation of linguists and Bible translators, and that there’s no way God could ever involve you in what he’s doing… Juliann in Papua New Guinea explains that this isn’t the case!
People often say to me, “Oh, I could never do what you do!” Hmmmm . . . that may or may not be true, but when I think about what so many of my friends here do, I think the exact same thing about their jobs. Sharlene is the principal of the elementary school here . . . I would be a truly terrible principal. Joy and Liz go out to a village, play with kids all day, tell them about Jesus and invent educational games and puzzles for them . . . more power to them! Jamie is a pilot . . . any of you who have been around when my nonexistent sense of direction was being exercised will be deeply thankful that I don’t try to fly you anywhere. Vico, Chad and Paul fix people’s computers . . . the fact that I am one of their most faithful customers should tell you something right there! Donna and Esther teach high school . . . something I can’t even imagine doing. Give me a backpack, a mosquito net, and a blank wordlist, and I’m good to go. But if I had to fly a plane, teach teenagers, deal with computers, or run a school . . . well, I would tremble, and you should too. I guess I just think it’s cool that we all have such different jobs that are all so necessary . . . and I think it’s cool that so many of us love our own jobs but can’t imagine doing anyone else’s. That’s the body of Christ. read more
That is indeed the body of Christ. We are all made differently, but God involves each one of us in translating his story into languages and lives around the world. Take a look at just a few of the ways you could work alongside language communities as they start to develop their language and translate the Bible for the first time!
Welcome to the new look! We’ve just launched the new website and we hope you enjoy exploring what we have to share here.
The Bible: the Story everybody needs – The Bible contains the amazing story of God’s love for us and how he can be known by all of creation. For that reason, we want everybody on the planet to have access to God’s word in the language they understand best, to make it possible for them to get to know God for themselves.
We’ve organised the site into three sections: Live the Story is full of resources to help you, your group or your church to interact with the Bible. Give the Story shows the variety of ways we can be part of sharing the Story with others, by praying, giving, going or telling others about the need for Bible translation.
The Wycliffe Story includes latest news, blogs and contact information. It also explains more about us: including the story of how Cameron Townsend’s heart was moved by the Cakchiquel man who asked “If your God is so great, why can’t he speak my language?”
As Wycliffe UK and others worldwide work together to provide God’s word to people in their heart language, more and more individuals, networks, churches and organisations are connecting with us to see this happen by 2025. Find out more!
Technology is advancing at a rapid rate around the world – just 20 years ago a computer was a specialist and expensive piece of equipment and a phone was something that was connected to the wall by a wire. Now even some of the most remote communities on the planet are instantly connected to the rest of the world through mobile phones and the internet.
Naturally technology has a huge role to play in Bible translation, whether it’s in speeding up language analysis, adapting translations into similar languages, making translated scriptures widely available, or bringing instant communication when previously collaboration on an issue would have been impossible or taken several weeks.
In the Mara region of northern Tanzania, a translation checking session was recently held, with a difference…
Earlier this week the Mara Cluster Project conducted a Bible translation consultant check of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22 in the Simbiti language. Nothing unusual, right? Well, not really. The consultant was in Holland and the translation team in a small town in Tanzania. Not only was this event a success, it brought insight to the consultant checking process. Remote consulting is now a viable method of conducting consultant checks in the Mara Cluster. read more
Praise God for how new technologies are improving communication and bringing new possibilities for language communities around the world!
If you’d like to find out more about the role that IT and computing play in Bible translation, and how you can use your IT skills to help translate God’s word into the 2,300 languages that still don’t have it, why not come to our Check IT Out day on Saturday 20th February?
Biblefresh.com launches today in Glasgow. Biblefresh is a partnership of over 50 agencies in the UK, including Wycliffe Bible Translators, to “help you grow in appetite and confidence in the scriptures during the year 2011″.
One of the four tracks is Bible Translation, and naturally that is one of the areas we are involved in. Eddie Arthur, our Executive Director and Phil Prior, Head of Marketing are in Burkina Faso at the moment looking at a project that Biblefresh can support.
From Eddie’s latest blog post Visiting the Coal Face:
Four of the projects are run by ANTBA (Wycliffe Burkina) and one by The Burkina Bible Society. Each of these projects are managed and run entirely by Burkinabé*. The dedication and enthusiasm which they bring to the work is awesome.
The work that is being done is slowly transforming the lives of these communities in time and in eternity. It’s exciting stuff.
* Burkinabé is the word for people of Burkina Faso.
James Cameron’s movie, Avatar is currently the second highest grossing film of all time. High quality computer animation combined with good story telling have proved to be an unbeatable combination at the box-office. But as this video demonstrates, computer animation can be used for much more than fiction.
This is Luke 1:1-4 in Spanish sign language. Admittedly, the CGI is not as good as at the movies, but the story is far better than anything that Hollywood has come up with.
There are millions of people around the world for whom their heart language is a signed language, and these people need access to the Scriptures. A Wycliffe member, Julia, recently shared her concern for speakers of signed languages:
She says unfortunately Bible translation is far from complete with these languages. “In the world, there is only one New Testament available in sign language and that’s in American Sign Language. The team that’s working in American Sign Language is about two-thirds through the Old Testament now. And so that’ll be out soon.”
That version of the New Testament is depicted by someone actually performing sign language on a DVD. That has been started in a few other countries, too. However, Julia says that can be dangerous in countries where Christians are persecuted. “They can’t put their face on a DVD and then distribute it throughout the country because that is dangerous for them.”
Wycliffe, therefore, is experimenting with the idea of using avatar animation to do the translation. “An avatar is an animated character whose movements and facial expressions down to the detail are based on an actual, live person and then takes all their movements and characteristics and transfers them to a computer-animated figure.”
Julia says, “Deaf people can receive the Scripture in their own language, and yet there’s a lot less danger for the Bible translation teams.”
The deaf minority group is unique. Julia says it’s the only language and cultural minority group that’s born into families that are not of their culture and not of their language.” (Read the whole interview here).
Words for Life, the Wycliffe UK Magazine recently devoted a whole edition to the issue of signed languages. You can download a pdf copy here. If you are interested in other ways in which computers can be used to help Bible translation, why not take a look at our Check IT Out event in February?
If you read Spanish, you can find far more information on the Spanish Sign Language Translation project by visiting their website.
The European Training Programme (ETP), who every year train 100s of students in the skills necessary to work cross-culturally in language based development work, have gained government recognition for the high quality of their courses.
The British Accreditation Council recognised ETP for ‘effective teaching’ and ‘well planned sessions, delivered with knowledge and humour by competent and knowledgeable staff’.
David Morgan, the Director of the European Training Programme, says, “This is excellent news because it means we can continue to have trainees of all nationalities present on ETP courses and maintain the cross-cultural mix of students, so vital for the areas we cover.”
Many students are already working in minority languages and visit ETP for a short time to update skills and knowledge, while others are just investigating the possibility of working full-time in the field. A very popular Masters degree, validated by Middlesex University, in Field Linguistics runs annually which includes a twelve month placement with a language project somewhere around the world.
For more information about ETP and their courses visit www.eurotp.org
Whilst Santa was still busy loading his sleigh in the North Pole, in Tamale (Ghana) a large truck laden with boxes of Bibles arrived for the Konkomba people.
The second edition of the Bible in their language arrived earlier this month. For the past year or more they have been asking when copies of the Bible would again be available. Now ten thousand more copies are available for those who need them. Please pray that every copy will be used by the Lord to transform Konkomba lives.
In many projects, translation work can’t even start until the fonts and keyboards are available so that the computers can handle the writing system being used.
That’s why we rely upon technical specialists in a partner organisation called SIL, who have set up the Non-Roman Script Initiative. Their task is to provide guidance, information, research and development so that complex scripts can be used in linguistic study, translation, literacy and publishing. They want to help language communities and the people who work for them communicate effectively and productively regardless of the writing system used in a given community, and to make sure that script-related computing issues do not impede them in their work.
If you’ve ever been interested in complex fonts, or scripts that read right to left, have a look at scripts.sil.org for more information. IT roles in Wycliffe are many and varied, and periodically we run a day-long event called Check IT Out for those who would like to find out more. The next one will be held on 20 February 2010. Come along!
