A broken life, an uncertain future, an encounter with the Bible, a new hope. 

A Personal God

 

The Word for the World Bible Translators was founded in 1981, in Pretoria, South Africa.  From the beginning the vision was clear: 

God's Word for every person in his or her heart language, leading to the establishment and growth of Bible-centered churches in every tongue, nation and tribe.

Our method can be summed up as:

We recruit, train and assist Bible translators working in languages into which the Bible has not yet been translated.

The first Bible first translation project the organization undertook was for the Chikunda people of Zimbabwe.  The Word for the World is now involved in Bible translation in Africa (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and  Zimbabwe), Europe (Slovakia) and India, with support bases in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

We are currently involved in 28 Bible translation projects.  The Seed Company and Pioneer Bible Tanslators are our partners in some of these projects. 

All our projects are "full-scale," that is, aimed at translating the entire Bible.

The Word for the World focuses on empowering nationals to do the work of Bible translation for their own people.  All our translators are nationals, and nationals also serve in leadership positions as project leaders, project coordinators (taking the responsibility of overseeing several projects, even country directors.  Expatriates serve as trainers and consultants, or in other types of support ministries. 

Empowering nationals and releasing them to take initiative in all areas of Bible translation is beneficial in many ways.

* Nationals working in their own country require a fraction of the financial support needed by expatriates.

* A team of trained nationals are able to complete the translation of the entire New Testament in three years, and the complete Bible in ten years.

* Translations done by nationals are free of translationese, and are accepted much more readily by the people for whom the translations are done.

We also provide short-term opportunities for persons with the necessary skills and expertise to serve as trainers and consultants.  We invite such persons to teach in our training program, or work with teams of translators, utilizing their skills and expertise, without having to make Bible translation their career.

Our training program is one of the main thrusts of our work.  We began training Bible translators in South Africa in 1988, in a two-year, full time training program.  By 1996 we realized that it would be more consistent with our approach of empowering nationals if we took the training to the countries where potential translators lived. 

As a result, in 1998 we phased out the full time training program in South Africa.  Dividing the courses in to modules, we started taking the full contents of the curriculum to countries where the need for Bible translation was urgent. 

In 2005 we had 173 trainees from 75 different languages in our training program.  Most of the trainees came from our own recruiting efforts, in conjunction with local churches.  There were also trainees from other organizations, like SIL, the Bible Societies, Pioneer Bible Translators, and Evangel Bible Translators.  Lecturers at the training were our own staff, members of other organizations (SIL, Pioneer Bible Translators, the Bible Societies) and short term, guest lecturers.