Bibles in much-loved languages

I saw a grown man cry when he first saw a Bible in his mother tongue. STEPBible now has a bundle of new and partly finished Bibles in new languages from Wycliffe/Unfolding Word, as well as some important Spanish Bibles from Lockman.

New Minority Languages

Wycliffe Associates have created new tools for translating the Bible by non-specialists. They recognise the value of experts and the wonderful tools that already exist for highly trained specialists, but there are many communities who want to communicate the Bible quickly to their generation. These believers are looking forward to 'real' translations by trained translators teamed up with Bible scholars to check their work, but such projects take many years. And these believers want to reach their generation - and quickly.

Their frustration was well-expressed by a small group of former Islamic terrorists who were so excited with their new-found faith that they wanted to devote their time to translating the Bible into their local tongue. They were sent on a course in preparation for learning how to translate the Bible and, first of all, how to use computers. They quietly did all the exercises for several days, as they were introduced to the concepts of word-processing, making backups, looking up information etc, and then they spoke up. "Look, this is taking too long", one said. "A few months ago we were hacking into the Pentagon - we really don't need these lessons!" They were quickly moved on to a more appropriate stream.

Bibles and partial Bibles have already been produced by this quick method in many languages with more on the way. They are based on the Unlocked Literal Bible or the Unlocked Dynamic Bible - two English Bibles that have been specially translated to create a basis for re-translation. As a Biblical scholar, I am somewhat reluctant to admit that this is necessary, because it is far from ideal. But these believers want to reach their friends, and they don't mind that their translation will be superceded in a few years time when a better translation is made. They need something now!

STEPBible now has several of these new Bibles. Go to www.STEPBible.org and type "ULB", then click on "more..". Some of the Bibles are complete, but others are still being translated. To see which books are available, click on the Copyright notice at the bottom of the page. Interestingly, the book that most Bibles have finished is Galatians - perhaps because this is a brief letter that is great for preaching the Gospel. Others, such as the Lopit language, spoken by 50,000 people in Sudan, started with Luke. This is the Gospel that most population groups come across for the first time, thanks to the massive translation work of the Jesus Film project - but even this is unavailable in Lopit.

The translations with exotic ancient scripts look the most interesting, but actually the most exciting languages are those using a plain latin font - because this usually indicates they had no written language before Bible translators came along. A Kalahari bushman who is now a Bible scholar came to Tyndale House, and I took him to the Bible Society repository in Cambridge. There he was shown a Bible written in his own mother tongue - the seTlhaping dialect of seTswana. He had never seen this language written down, but it was in a latin script, so he could pronounce the words. As he mouthed the words to himself, his eyes filled with tears: this was God's words in the language he spoke at home! He said he had heard of a man once who owned this Bible, but it was lost. The Bible Society has now made it into an electronic Sechuana Tlhaping Bible, so hopefully we'll be able to add this to STEPBible.

Lockman Foundation Bibles

I was excited to hear recently that the Lockman Foundation have generously allowed their Bibles to be distributed freely in non-commercial software. This includes

New American Standard Bible (NASB)
La Biblia de las Américas (LBLA)
Nueva Biblia de las Américas (NBLA)

STEPBible already had the NASB (thanks to their generosity to us) which is especially useful because it is fully tagged to Greek & Hebrew. All their Bibles have a superb set of cross-references, and all follow a philosophy that tries to translate word-by-word. This makes them ideal for reading alongside the originals in STEPBible.

David Instone-Brewer,
Tyndale House, Cambridge

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