A translation workshop

We recently had a translation workshop in Darwin where people from communities around the Top End came together to translate 7 verses from Luke into their own languages. The passage is about Jesus' birth, and the participants were translating it from the Plain English Version. The hope is to print a Christmas book in a couple of years with the passage in as many Indigenous languages as possible. We had 11 participants for the week, and between them they completed the whole process for 6 languages, and a 7th was completed several days later! For most of those languages it will be the first ever published Scripture.

I was pleasantly surprised by how many participants came and how much they achieved, as well as how I much was able to help some of them work through the translation process, even though I don't speak their languages. I was also surprised by some of the words that they struggled to translate, having no equivalent in their own language, such as "animals", "box", "world" and "save".

Give thanks that the workshop went so well, and pray that through these translations people will be brought closer to God, and some will be inspired to translate more Scripture for their communities.