Bible translators celebrate

By October 16, 2006

USA (MNN) — Bible translators with Wycliffe Bible Translators are celebrating. “We celebrated 14 different Scriptures, many of those were New Testaments being completed, but in a couple of cases it was what is called a mini-Bible. That’s a complete New Testament and then selections from the Old Testament,” says Wycliffe’s Ruth Hubbard.

These translations represent a significant number of people, says Hubbard. “These 14 language communities that we celebrated this time represent about 3.6 million people who have access to God’s Word.”

While this is a great celebration, Hubbard says they’re far from being done. “There are about 1,500 language projects that are in process right now and 2,500 languages where a program has not even begun.”

Unfortunately, Hubbard says, retirement is having a huge impact on Wyliffe’s work. “As this large group of people who’ve been serving are beginning to retire, to replace them as well as to meet growing needs for translation, we’re looking to recruit thousands of people in the next 10 to 15 years.”

Computers and communications have improved Bible translation. She says the remainder of the needs are in Sub-Saharan Africa, China, Central Asia and Papua New Guinea.

Hubbard says the most important thing we can do as believers is pray. “One of the prayer requests that we have is that there would be more and more people who would be committed to praying — praying for the people who are doing translation, praying for the language groups where a project hasn’t even begun, praying that the financial resources would be available.”

If you’d like to help Wycliffe in their translation work, contact them through their information listed here.

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