International (MNN) — What are the “HR needs” in Bible translation today? A report from the Lausanne Movement earlier this year traced out a surge in Bible translation work in the past 50 years.
(Graphic courtesy unfoldingWord via Facebook)
Five decades is long enough for things to change drastically! The field used to look like missionaries traveling cross-culturally to work with local people groups and languages. Today, technology and communication have accelerated the process to more than we can keep up with.
Dane* with unfoldingWord says local churches around the world may have caught the vision for God’s Word, but they still need equipping. He points to a massive need for Bible translation consultants — but unfoldingWord’s proposed solution isn’t what you might think.
“These (translation consultants) are the people that come in after the first draft has been made. They help the local people check their draft,” Dane explains.
“There are not enough of those people in the world to handle all of the translation demand that is out there. We cannot train them fast enough.”
To help with this need, unfoldingWord and other ministries have compiled open-license resources they hand to church-based teams of translators.
One unfoldingWord team member described this strategy like this: “If we can make specialized Bible translation resources available to the global church, then we won’t need a [Western] missionary force that takes decades to train and decades to deploy. We can equip the church to do it for themselves, and the church can do it forever!”
Learn more here about unfoldingWord resources for translators.
“People who wanted to make a translation, without a theological education, were able to achieve their goal due to the fact that the tools were prepared by unfoldingWord specialists and their employees who speak Russian.”
–Pastor Ivan K.
(Photo, caption courtesy of unfoldingWord)
But don’t leave this article with misunderstanding — PhD linguists and translation consultants are still needed. It’s just that they were needed yesterday! The point is that there are many ways to serve in Bible translation today.
“(If you’re interested in Bible translation) I would really research the Church-Centric Bible Translation approach. God is doing some amazing things in the world, and they’re new things. So we need content developers, we need software developers, we need people who want to dedicate themselves to training [others],” Dane says.
“I would encourage you to study all of those things and be open minded about where God would lead you in terms of your ministry.”
Learn more here about the Church-Centric Bible Translation (CCBT) approach that unfoldingWord and other ministries advocate. Would you prayerfully consider what your role in this critical field might be?
*Name withheld for security
Header photo courtesy of unfoldingWord.
