Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

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A new British Bible

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

2011 has been a significant year for one British Bible, as we celebrated the 400th anniversary for the King James Bible. It has now become very significant for another British Bible.

The first complete Bible in Cornish has just been published. Despite Bible portions having been available in Cornish since a translation of Matthew in the seventeeth century, this is the first time the whole Bible has been translated.

Cornish has been considered by many to be an extinct language: its last mother tongue speaker died 200 years ago. However, it has been undergoing a revival recently. There are Cornish radio programmes and magazines. Road signs with both English and Cornish are becoming a more common sight. Last year, the first Cornish-medium preschool opened.

The translator, Nicholas Williams, puts the decline of Cornish down, in part, to the absence of the Bible in the language. The new translation, he hopes, will play a major role in the continuing rise in interest:

“One of the reasons we lost the language was because there was no Bible in Cornish. The Welsh had one (in Welsh) from the time of Elizabeth I, but the Cornish didn’t. As well as being the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures it is one of the defining books of our culture. Once you have the Bible you have created your literary heritage and I hope this book will be influential in the Cornish revival.” Read more about the Cornish translation in this report from the BBC.

Many millions of others, around the world, are still without the Bible in their language. Likewise, they struggle to maintain their cultures and languages when surrounded by more dominant languages. But unlike today’s Cornish speakers, they can’t read the Bible in another language they understand equally well. They need it in the language they understand best.

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What does Dickens have to say about Bible translation?

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Charles Dickens was an adamant spokesperson for the poor and oppressed of Victorian London. In Bleak House, he describes the experience of Jo, a street-sweeper, illiterate in a world filled with the written word:

Jo as represented on the cover of Bleak House, 1853

It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows!

To see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not, to have the least idea of all that language — to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb!

It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? From Chapter 16

While Jo’s experience may be fictional, the desciption is true to what life was like for many in the UK 150 years ago. And while it happened in this country a century and a half ago, the impossibility of reading is still the experience of millions of children around the world today.

Where Wycliffe Bible Translators begin work with languages — analysing grammar, developing writing systems, translating the Bible — literacy is close at hand. It is an essential part of bringing the word of God in any written form. People are brought from the isolating position of the modern-day Jo, and can read and write their own language. The world opens up to them.

Help them to read the words of God’s word.

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The Bible gets personal

Monday, September 12th, 2011

The point of Bible translation is never only a book. While Wycliffe workers spend many years ensuring accurate translation of a book into a book, the point is not the book but to see lives changed, as people hear God’s word.

The Sursurunga people of Papua New Guinea have had the New Testament for little over a year, but already they have been convicted of sin that was deeply engrained in their culture. This is an account of the impact Bible truth had on their way of life:

Sursurunga people grow up with the belief that if they allow their young children to cry, evil spirits will come to take the child’s spirit, and the child will become sick and die. In order to keep their children from crying, parents start lying to their children from the day they are born.

Because of this belief, lying has become an integral part of their culture. However, when Sursurunga parents learned [...] that lying is a sin against God, they were convicted to change the way they relate to their children.

[...] One grandfather went home, called his family together, and confessed to them his sin of lying to his kids when they were small, saying that the moon would eat them if they cried. One of his daughters had started telling her kids the same lie. He picked up his 9 month old grandchild, told her he was sorry, and asked her forgiveness. He asked his whole family to do the same thing, and he prayed, asking God to cut this sin from his family. (Account written by Karen Weaver)

There’s more to this story – read more on TheWordisLife.net.

What struck me most was the radical response people had to the truth they learnt in the Bible: they were willing to forego a cultural way of life to obey God’s word. Am I willing to do the same? Do I even let the Bible get personal in my life?

Learn more about how God changes lives when his word is translated, and get involved.

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The YouTube Bible

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

As part of the celebrations of the anniversary of the King James Bible, one of the many celebratory projects that has been launched is The YouTube Bible. It’s aim is to have video of people reading every chapter in the King James Bible. That’s 1189 chapters!

Prunella Scales and Timothy West read their selections

You’d probably be surprised by the people involved. There are politicians, like Boris Johnson (Isaiah 11) and John Berkow, the Speaker of the House of Commons (Jonah 1). There are writers, including former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion (Ruth 1). Actors Timothy West (Revelation 1) and Prunella Scales (1 Samuel 16)  have contributed, as have academics Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Library, (Jonah 4) and – surprisingly – Richard Dawkins (Song of Songs 2). And Prince Charles has read John 14.

But the King James Bible wasn’t written just for the politicians and royalty. It was written for us everyday folk too. And that’s important in this project. If you are interested in contributing to The YouTube Bible, you can find out how on the website, kingjamesbibletrust.org.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible translation. But in many languages, spoken by more than 300 million people, not even one chapter of the Bible is available. As we contribute to more people hearing the KJB, we can also help more people to hear the word for the first time. Wycliffe Bible Translators are involved in translating the Bible, around the world, for people who have never heard it. Find out how you can give the Bible.

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New songs

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Right now on the European Training Programme Campus there’s an EthnoArts course underway (8 Aug – 2 Sept). What’s all that about? Its aim is to enable students to know more about how to employ music, arts and worship in a non-Western context.

When the word of God is translated for the first time in a new language group, it affects not only the teaching and preaching of God’s word, but also the worship. Rather than translating foreign western hymns and tunes into the national church context, new songs are written in the local tradition, using God’s newly translated word. Here’s a glimpse of a brand new church song written by Dogon musicians being sung in January this year (Mali, West Africa).  It was captured by Rob Baker, a Wycliffe Bible Translators ethnomusicologist who supports and encourages local songwriters in this process.

Students on the EthnoArts course will be learning to assess what kinds of performing arts exist locally, and which might be most appropriate to carry Christian messages.  Find out more about Scripture Use specialists – who work in arts and media, helping local communities engage with God’s word in their language.

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The handwritten Bible

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Last week the Methodist Church in the UK published their handwritten Bible. The project, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, has now been completed and can be viewed on the Deepening Discipleship website.

“The Handwritten Bible contains 7,000 pages of text and illustrations transcribed by people from every part of Britain and further afield. More than 30,000 volunteers joined in from across communities – including prisons, schools, colleges, libraries, nursing homes, airports and shopping centres – to copy the whole of the NRSV translation.”

Read the full press release here

The size and scope of the project is quite impressive, drawing in so many people to read and copy God’s word.

Compare that to the two translators I met last year in Burkina Faso. Their names have long since passed from my memory, but the story of their work will stick with me for a long time.

These two gentlemen are part of a translation project for a group of people waiting to be able to read their first words of Scripture in the language that they know the best. The translators’ homes and families are based in a rural village in Burkina Faso, a place with few amenities and certainly without a reliable electricity supply. So, on Sunday afternoons they get on their bikes and cycle more than 20 miles on rough, poorly treated roads, to the translation centre. There they make their beds on the floor ready to start work when the sun comes up. They spend the week like this, plugging away on computers in a ‘translation centre’ that is little more than a small building on a compound, housing a couple of desks and chairs, before cycling back to their wives and families on Friday afternoon in order to spend the weekend with them.

I love it when people become engaged with Scripture. Let’s have more initiatives like the handwritten Bible so that people in the UK can hear God speaking to them. But, let’s not forget that over 300 million people don’t have access to God’s word in their own language yet. It’s not that they are short of copies of the Bible, they don’t even have a Bible to copy from.

Find out more about two of the Bible translation projects going on in Burkina Faso on our website.

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A Story worth telling

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

For the last week, an unusual workshop has been running in the International Linguistic Centre in Dallas, Texas. The participants used no paper, took no notes and received no handouts. They have been practicing building stories that stay with people.

Estimates vary, but it is thought only 70% of the world can read. The rate of illiteracy’s even higher for language communities where no part of the Bible has ever been translated. In response to the wide use of storytelling for sharing information in oral cultures like these, Wycliffe Bible Translators are working with Cru, YWAM and TWR* in a partnership called OneStory.

The aim of OneStory is to share the Bible with people in ways they can understand and connect with. They develop sets of Bible stories which concentrate on particular Biblical truths but also pick up on themes which resonate with certain cultures. Each set of stories is designed to be easy to learn and retell. Some sets are even available online (take a look at these on the OneStory website).

By developing training and programmes for this type of storytelling, the OneStory partnership overcomes the barriers of illiteracy which often stop people hearing God’s Story.

On their website – onestory.org – there are stories and prayer requests about the work OneStory are doing. Find out more about Wycliffe’s wider work to share God’s Story.

*Find out more about these organisations on their websites: Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) at ccci.org; YWAM at ywam.org;and TWR at twr.org.

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Biblefresh So Far

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

As you may know, Wycliffe Bible Translators and lots of other organisations have been celebrating the ‘Year of the Bible’  through Biblefresh. Biblefresh is an initiative to help people get back into the Bible. So with the Biblefresh year more than halfway gone, how have things been going?

How has the Bible changed you? Photo from Biblefresh

Here are some of the numbers we’ve seen since January 1:

120 different organisations and agencies have come together sharing a single vision under the Biblefresh banner.

12-plus different dishes inspired by the Bible such as locusts and wild honey, Passover supper, pigeon, partridge and quail and bread and fish were served up by members of the Churches Together in Sidmouth.

3,000 shoeboxes were filled with different items to represent each of the 66 books of the Bible. Boxes included knitted figleaves, Lego men being massacred and the feeding of 5,000 jelly babies. The shoe boxes were displayed at Peterborough Cathedral.

21,000 GBP pounds has been raised so far by asking people to donate £1 for every copy of the Bible they own. This has gone towards translating the Old Testament into Bissa Lebir and the New Testament into Bissa Barka – two native languages of the Bissa people of Burkina Faso, the world’s third poorest nation.

biblefresh logoYou can get more numbers from the Biblefresh press release, available here on the Evangelical Alliance website.

There’s still time for you to get involved with Biblefresh: find out more.

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Heart of Darkness

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Wycliffe Canada have just published the latest edition of their magazine, Word Alive. Word Alive is an award-winning publication; but rather than leaving you merely impressed by beautiful language and photography, this season’s release will rend and tear your heart.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, people live under an opaque shadow of trauma. One story recounted in the magazine is of a workshop held last March:

20 Congolese church leaders from four language groups assembled for two weeks at a retreat centre in Goma. They participated in a trauma healing workshop* with a unique focus: to produce oral translations of the stories and lessons contained in the trauma healing book.

[...] Just days into the Goma workshop, five of the participants from the Kobo language learned that militants had again attacked villages in their home area. Their houses had been set ablaze – for the third time since 1994.

“It’s part of our lives, these difficulties,” said one, speaking through an interpreter.

You can read more in Word Alive about how Congolese Christians are working to rebuild their lives and find forgiveness in the midst of violent darkness.

Speaking in people’s mother tongues is not a theoretical or academic exercise: it can begin to heal broken hearts. Wycliffe Bible Translators are committed to helping everyone read the Bible in the language of their heart. Give someone God’s word.

Photograph by Alan Hood for Wycliffe Canada.

*Find out more about the work of Trauma Healing in this previous blog post.

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(Bible)Freshen up for July

Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

We are now more than halfway through the year, and it can be easy to forget those resolutions we made months ago in January. But summer is actually a brilliant time to get back to our resolutions – including getting back to celebrating the Bible.

biblefresh logoBiblefresh* is a brilliant way of getting back into the Bible. And they’ve got ten great reasons why July is a super month to get involved. For example,

1. Free book giveaway – CWR are giving away free copies of Selwyn Hughes’ book Getting the Best from the Bible to everyone in a Biblefresh church. But stocks are limited, so get signed up soon!

…

3. Genesis to Revelation – There are some great resources for getting into reading the Bible cover-to-cover, by yourself, with friends or as a church (and they work just as well starting in July as January!).

A Burkinabe woman holds the Bissa Lebir New Testament close to her heart.…

6. For young people – Soul Survivor has been running a Bible-in-a-year programme, and they start again in September.

Visit the Biblefresh website – biblefresh.com – to fill in the blanks and find out more about the great resources available. Here at Wycliffe Bible Translators, we feel particularly passionate about number 10: ‘Give the Bible’. Biblefresh is raising money to give the Bible to people in Burkina Faso. Find out more.

*Biblefresh: a movement of churches, agencies, colleges and festivals seeking to encourage and inspire churches across the UK to a greater confidence and appetite for the word of God.

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