James Petticrew has just posted an interesting little article on finding good translations in English for common Christian terms like repent. If we are going to communicate the radical message of Jesus in today’s world this is definitely something we will need to do. Take a read, it’s worth the time. HT Brian.
I flew into Abidjan yesterday for my second visit in six months. The city has changed a great deal since we left it in 2000, the civil war means that there are far fewer expatriots around – the SIL centre which used to be such a hive of activity is now depressingly quiet – my […]
Sometime in the early 1990s I wrote a piece for an in-house journal about what was going on when Kouya people became Christians. Sadly (or perhaps not) I’ve lost both my copy of the journal and the original file – and yes I did have it backed up, I just lost the backup as well. […]
This is a short video from a talk I gave in Durham to some students interested in Bible translation. It tells the story of Bahi Laurent, the first Kouya to become a Christian and how he prayed for thirty years for translators to come and live in his village – only to get us!
Far too many years ago, I was helping run a course on language and culture acquisition. Part of the course was to help the students as they worked with a Congolese man, trying to learn his language – Lingala. I didn’t learn much Lingala and the little I did learn, I forgot quickly apart from […]
The Times has an interesting short article about the translation of the Bible into the Kriol language of Northern Australia. The comments on the article are worth looking at too, they illustrate some of the common misunderstandings and complaints that Bible translators always face. In Kriol Christians are known as Christianmob, while the Bible is […]
One of the things which links my interests in Bible translation and missional church issues in the West is the power of stories. Story telling is a wonderful way to introduce people to the Scriptures in a minority language or to the claims of Christ in post-modern Britain. I’m interested to see the launch of […]
Paul Shaddick, who used to work on a neighbouring language to Kouya in Ivory Coast, has just updated his website and started blogging (but there is no RSS feed, Paul). Whatever the quality of the content of the website, it is hard to forgive him for the pun in the header. Paul is now the […]
Henry Neufeld has posted a fascinating little meditation which starts with the Easter message and ends with Bible translation. It’s well worth a read. The disciples saw the empty tomb. They saw the risen Christ, but it was up to them to translate that message for the remainder of the world. The gospel commission calls […]
These are the links to the sites we talked about in today’s discussion about the Internet and email: Better Bibles Blog Wayne Leman’s Bible Translation Page New Testament Gateway Old Testament Gateway Bible Gateway