Building Strong Translations

In May of 2023 a group of churches in Papua New Guinea invited a group of observers, including FIA, to learn how they translated the Bible through their church and community-based Bible translation projects.

The first Sunday of our visit, a local church invited us to worship with them as their honored guests. We shook the hands of everyone in the congregation and sat on blue plastic chairs among them. The breeze blew through the open windows as we listened to the sermon. As the pastor preached, he occasionally turned toward us to translate his sermon into English.

Near the end, we stood with the congregation and attempted to join them in singing. Though we stumbled through the unfamiliar words, we worshiped together with smiles and laughter. Half-way through the last song, the earth shook. We, the guests, looked around in worry. But our hosts seemed unconcerned, so we continued to sing.

Later that day, we returned to the missionary-built guesthouse where we were staying and told the women in charge of the guesthouse about the church service. We marveled that no one had reacted to the miniature earthquake during the service, and the women told us that small earthquakes often shook the island because of the nearby volcanos. However, the women said, they run out of the guesthouse whenever there's an earthquake. We asked why, since no one in the church had reacted. They laughed, and told us that foreign missionaries had built the guesthouse out of concrete, so it was more likely to fall during an earthquake. The women explained that they build their own houses with wood, which better absorbs the shaking.

There were no more earthquakes while we visited the churches' translation projects, but there were continual reminders that our hosts could build strong things. As we gathered with an entire village to listen to a translation team's draft, or listened to translators confidentiality describe their translation choices, or heard church leaders expound on the importance of equipping their translators, the churches' investment in creating strong Bible translations became clear.

Our observation of the Papua New Guinean churches' process and the feedback the translators gave us fundamentally changed FIA. Our resources became stronger because of how the church used them, and clearer because of translators' suggestions. And as we have created FIA, we have continually returned to what the women in Papua New Guinea told us. In much the same way that a wooden house built by the community could stand in the midst of earthquakes, a translation built by the community can weather spiritual storms.