God’s Word in Every Language on Earth—Doing it His Way
When my wife, Jo, and I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1965, we were influenced by a book that was published six years earlier. Two Thousand Tongues to Go which was the story of the beginning of Wycliffe Bible Translators.
At that time, the Bible had already been translated into most European languages and the major languages of Asia and Africa. This book, however, focused on the need for translation into the possibly two thousand languages spoken by indigenous people groups that were not fluent in the national language of the countries in which they lived.
What nobody knew back in the mid-1960s was that there were about 7,400 languages spoken in the world, of which only a few hundred were national languages. During the next thirty-five years, Wycliffe trained linguists, discovered and researched thousands of Indigenous languages, and began working in many hundreds of them as Bible translators.
VISION 2025
In 1999, Wycliffe and SIL International set a challenging goal for the worldwide Church and for themselves; VISION 2025, a twenty-five-year sprint to start a Bible translation program in every language that needs one by the year 2025.
Those of us Wycliffe translators who, during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, had worked for decades to complete a translation considered this over-the-top goal a fantasy that could not possibly be reached.
After all, just as all Bible translators before us, we worked with pencils and slips of paper to make our dictionaries. Every word of every first draft was written out by pen and ink, and after 1950, switched to more efficient ballpoint pens. Later drafts were pecked out on manual typewriters.
God’s Plan: From Ballpoints to Computers.
It was only in the 1980s that we started using a few computers. They were slow, primitive, clunky, and, although expensive, prone to frequent breakdowns. Even so, they were faster than whacking away on a typewriter and eventually became more useful.
But God was at work improving the electronic equipment industry. God also led highly trained and strongly motivated programmers to progress in their abilities to speed up and improve the work of translation of His Word.
God at Work
During the past few decades, Wycliffe Canada programmers working with partners in Wycliffe USA developed what is now known as The Bible Translator’s Assistant (TBTA). This software analyses a target language and produces a first draft template of translation. TBTA is constantly improving in accuracy and ease of use. The result is a vast decrease in both the time and cost of translating Scriptures.
I was in my last year as president of Wycliffe Canada in 1999 when Wycliffe and SIL
International cast Vision 2025. Wycliffe Canada joined with a special recruiting program called “Race to 2025.” God not only increased the Wycliffe Canada membership, but he also grew the number of translators to work with better-educated national translators. He vastly increased the number of donors and the size of their gifts. Many more prayer warriors are involved. With the growing experience in the new way of doing translation, God is receiving much praise and thanks for what He is doing.
Evidence of God’s Blessing
In 1999 when the Sprint to 2025 vision was cast, a new language Bible translation program was started every two weeks. But then God speeded up the task.
2019-’21, a new program started every five days.
In 2021-’23, a new program started every 30 hours.
This year, 2024, a new program starts every 17 hours!
Over 4,000 languages have translation programs currently in progress.
This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving.
How appropriate to give thanks for what God is doing in world evangelization and especially in making sure that His prophetic Word will be fulfilled:
“After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Rev. 7:9 NIV)