International (MNN) — According to Wycliffe Global Alliance, more than 1,200 of the world’s 7,000+ languages still lack Scripture. Only 736 languages have a full Bible.
Access to God’s Word is limited in most languages, to say the least, and study resources are even harder to come by. Dane* with unfoldingWord says, “These people need contextualized resources developed by their own pastors and leaders in their own countries.”
Helping these believers is not as easy as handing them an English Bible commentary and asking the community to share.
Believers need to have resources in their heart language to truly understand the deep meanings communicated in the text. However, translating critical study aids into another language isn’t as straightforward or simple as it may appear.
(Graphic courtesy of unfoldingWord)
For example, “If you wanted to take a Baker New Testament commentary and translate it into, say, Sudanese Arabic, you would have to have a copyright license and renew that copyright license every year,” Dane says.
“You can get those licenses if you have a lawyer to do the work for you, if you can afford it, and if you have time. These folks don’t have any of that stuff,” Dane continues.
“We’re providing [believers with] the means to do this [work] themselves.”
Yet even when church planters create study aids in their heart language with help from unfoldingWord, the aids aren’t always accepted. One young Gospel worker in South Asia found this out the hard way.
“They had done a nice translation. They had packaged it; I think it had a cross on the cover. His grandpa took one look at it and said, ‘That’s a foreign religion; I don’t want to have anything to do with that,’” Dane recalls.
“Because it looked like something from the West, Grandpa didn’t trust it.”
Everything changed when the worker explained his role in creating the resource. “As soon as grandpa understood, ‘Hey, this is in our language, and my grandson helped do this,’ the trust factor just went through the roof, and he was willing to listen and learn,” Dane says.
“When you bring something into a culture from the outside, they don’t necessarily trust it; they need to have a hand in [developing] that resource. We’re equipping local church networks in these hard-to-reach areas so that they can write their own commentaries and Bible translations.”
Here’s how you can help. “This summer, we have a generous donor who has provided a $100,000 matching grant, and we’re calling [it the] ‘Race for the Nations’ campaign. This will help fund Bible translation work in Chad, Benin, and Eurasia,” Dane says.
“If people wanted to be part of it, we would certainly welcome that and be grateful.”
*Name withheld for security purposes.
Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels.
