31 Dec. 2014
More than 10% of all the world’s current human language diversity is present on the tiny island of New Guinea. Even with all of the Bible translations available in English today, there are many languages in Papua New Guinea without any translation of Scripture.
Photo by Matt Allen
Rewind
Bible translation in Papua New Guinea has not been something new. The Nystrom family, for example, had worked with the Arop village (along the Bismark Sea) in Papua New Guinea to translate the Bible into a PNG language. That was 1988. Wycliffe released a video in 2014 on their story, which you can see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH_ewsGlkpo.
For them toward the beginning, the challenge of using 13 people as translators seemed too much. The number was reduced to about 4 people, working along with the missionaries there. Fortunately for the Nystrom family, they had very cooperative national translators.
Working on story books also followed. But other tribes needed their own Bibles in their own languages. Could the missionaries translate in more than one language at a time? Would that be possible?
But disaster struck in 1998 after an earthquake hit. A tsunami followed.
How do you cope with such a tragedy? What do you say to those who remain?
Fast forward
These sorts of questions still face missionaries, even in more recent years. As of 2014, there were still many PNG languages that do not have any version of the Bible–or practically any literature, for that matter. The occasional tragedy strikes.
As the new year starts, new challenges await. New opportunities become available. Missionaries return to the field. People lend in support through missions trips. New computer technology makes translation easier. Random people you’ve never met donate funds to springboard a new vision.
For the Nystrom family and those who followed, the resulting Aitape West Translation Project has brought several nationals together, as well as missionaries, to translate the Bible into a number of Papua New Guinean languages.
Although my upcoming book is not about the Nystrom family and their work, the experience of the Nystrom family is by no means the only PNG missionary story worth telling. Nor is it the only one involving Bible translation for a people who formerly never had the Word of God in their own language.
As a writer, I am looking forward to what 2015 holds in store for the characters in the book. Will 2015 be a miracle year?
For an example of another group reaching Bible-less peoples with translation efforts, see http://blog.wycliffe.org/2014/12/31/the-bigger-picture/.
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