OVERCOMING the ODDS for 300,000 PEOPLE

The challenge Pastor Manish was facing seemed insurmountable. His 300,000-member South Asian mountain people group desperately needs Scripture in the language they understand best. Pastor Manish, an educated man, wanted to do the translation, but two things stood in his way: an existing translation in a related language and some way to ensure that his translation met the standard of faithfulness and accuracy owed to every new Bible translation.

The Problem of Existing Translations

Imagine that you read and speak English and understand a little bit of Spanish, but most folks in your city speak Spanish, and all the signs, newspapers, magazines, Bibles and church services are in Spanish. How hard would it be to worship and grow in Christ?

Three hundred thousand of Pastor Manish’s people speak a dialect of this country’s national language, but more than 50 percent cannot read it and do not use it at home.

A traditional Bible Society published a Bible in the national language many years ago, but traditional translation methods made it too costly to produce one for a dialect.

Achieving Accuracy

Further, Manish, who holds a master’s degree in theology, is a serious student of God’s Word. He knows the importance of accuracy in translating it. He speaks and reads both the national gateway language and his heart language fluently. But he could not see how to do the rigorous checking and alignment to the original languages necessary for an accurate translation.

That’s when he heard about unfoldingWord and the Gateway Language project led by our church network partners in his country.

A New Way Forward

Manish wasted no time knocking on our partner’s door. Our translation partner, recognizing his zeal and his capacity, welcomed him, trained him and encouraged him to begin the work. That was just 24 months ago. 

Using unfoldingWord’s digital suite of content and tools, Manish has finished translating and checking the Titus book package for his people. He publishes a small bulletin for his people that comes with Scripture. He produces short audio messages that go out over social media to his people within the country and those who’ve spread out around the world. And he is eager to give his people the rest of God’s Word in the language they understand best.

Our church-network partners have a saying, “For the good fruit, you have to wait.” The version of Titus that we have through unfoldingWord’s process is far better, far better than the Bible we have and have been using for a long time in our country, because the meaning is coming exactly from the Greek,” our partner says. “All of the pastors and leaders are very excited about it.”

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