We tend to think of Africa as always being hot, but Hazel, who is studying Swahili in Tanzania, is finding that this is not always the case.
…Each morning has been warmer than the last, but that isn’t saying much as it has been sooo cold before 10 each day. When I go to class, I am wrapped up in as many layers as I can manage. On top of that, we have needed coal stoves in our outdoor classrooms to keep our feet warm. By chai time, I have usually stripped off the hoodies, and the kanga sometimes too, and by lunchtime and the afternoon, I am back to “hot English summer” gear! It’s crazy, but this is the dry season, and I am learning to adapt. I just didn’t expect Africa, and near to the equator, to be cold at any time. How wrong I was. Read More
If you’d like to know a bit more about Swahili, the Wisbeys have recently posted some interesting stuff on Swahili greetings.
Many of the remaining languages without scripture are in remote locations. If the locations are relatively inaccessible by road, the only option often is to fly in.
Wycliffe missionaries are often indebted to pilots and engineers from organisations like JAARS and Mission Aviation Fellowship. Take a look at what this kind of thing involves…
Ben had been interested in Wycliffe for a while, so when it was time for him to do a 5-week Bible college placement he investigated whether there would be any possibility for his skills to be used overseas.
A few months later he was in Burkina Faso on Wycliffe’s One to One programme, using his Bible knowledge and exegesis skills to help a group of Winye speakers translate the book of Titus into their mother tongue.
…The next day involved meeting the team and providing a short overview to the book of Titus and outlining some of the potential difficulties in translation (crazily this was all in French!). The team and I then spent the next few weeks working through the book. I would outline issues and explain passages to the translators who would then translate it into their language. They would then read back their translation and it would be checked for accuracy and meaning.
It was a long process with lots of difficulties. Often this was because there was a word or concept that was difficult to represent in the target language.
As well as helping with the translation work, Ben also had the chance to see previously translated scriptures being used, and people learning to read them.
If you’re interested in going overseas for anything from a few weeks to up to a year as part of a Bible college placement, gap year or career break, the One to One programme might be just what you’re looking for.
The European Training Programme, which trains Wycliffe language workers going overseas, is in the final stages of having its new MA programme validated by Middlesex University.
The MA in Field Linguistics would comprise 4 months of courses at the Wycliffe Centre, followed by a 2-year internship overseas, another 4 months of courses and a final dissertation.
It is expected that the first intake for the MA will be in August this year, with the students starting their overseas internships from January 2009.
For more information about the MA, take a look at the European Training Programme’s MA prospectus. If you’re interested in taking the MA as part of your training with Wycliffe UK, please take a look at our information about language work with Wycliffe and get in contact with us!
Simon Caudwell is a Wycliffe UK member who works across Africa. Here he talks about encouraging African churches to get involved in the Bible translation movement.
Stewart Johnson of Wycliffe UK gives a short overview of the way Bible translation is carried out in a country where access and security are a challenge.
This is a section of a talk I gave to a student group in Durham. It is a bit rough - filmed on a hand-held camera, but it gives an idea of how God works through numerous people in different places in getting his Kingdom established.
Phil at christianbookshopsblog.org.uk has posted about Vision 2025 and how the church should be diverting more of its time and energy into making the Bible available in minority languages rather than producing multiple versions in English.
As I write this I’m looking through a flyer from Wycliffe Bible Translators promoting their Vision 2025 initiative. It’s a wonderful vision, to have a Bible translation programme underway in every remaining language that does not yet have the Bible available, and to have this in place by 2025. According to Wycliffe, there are 6,912 languages currently spoken in the world: of these, 2,251 — representing 193 million people — do not yet have the Bible available. And yet here in the English speaking world we not only have so many different translations that we now need other books to help us choose between them, but we seem to have either another translation or another super-duper hip-hop trendy hot-water-bottle-wrapped must-have fashion accessory edition published every week.
Why?
I put it to you that if a fraction of the creative energy that’s put into hyping up the Bible for English language speakers and readers went into translation programmes, Vision 2025 could be realised by 2012 if not sooner — and what a gift that would be to the world, far greater than Britain hosting the Olympics will ever be!
Phil goes on to suggest that the way forward is to produce bookmarks reminding people of the thousands of languages in the world with not even a single verse of scripture. He even says that if we produce these bookmarks, he’ll put one in every Bible he sells…
David is a writer and photographer for Wycliffe International and its partners, based in the US but travelling around the world. Last month he photographed literacy classes in Peru.
Cusco Quechua is spoken by more than a million people in Peru. Literacy rates among Cusco Quechua speakers — particularly women — are extremely low, which has a negative effect on many women’s self-esteem. ATEK is a Quechua organization that, among many other things, trains Quechua teachers to run literacy classes in remote villages.
