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Literacy Literacy : A part of Bible Translation Joy OkSun Kim (Asia, Translator)  Ron and his wife, Lisa, very close friends of mine, are planning to go to south Asia as Literacy specialists. Literacy specialists in WBT are missionaries who teach others how to read and write, often in newly invented writing systems. Why did Ron and Lisa commit their life to serve God as literacy specialists? They told me that they first traveled to South Asia to visit an unreached ethnic group that their home church decided to pray for and support the birth of a reproducing church in that ethnic group (This is called 'Unreached Ethnic Group Adoption'). They found out that a team of Wycliffe Bible translators already had begun working on the Bible translation several years ago; and now the people were in great need of learning how to read and write in their mother tongue. In spring of 1996 they will complete the required three semesters of training and will be ready to go to south Asia. One evening my husband and I invited a group of missionaries to our home, and one of them, Andy, was the director of Bible translation in Ghana. He learned one of the minority languages and completed the Bible translation in 12 years. What made the translation a success? "The secret was", he said, "the literacy program". After the book of Luke was translated, they stopped translation and taught the people how to read and write; as the people became literate they realized the value of knowing the writing system of their own language, and the motivation to know their language increased. Moreover, they were able to evaluate the use of language in the Bible being translated by Andy and his team of translators. Last week I visited the Department of Literacy at WBT and interviewed Professor Ken Boothe who currently teaches literacy here at Dallas SIL. Among many things, I still remember that he said, "Translation gives people the Bible and literacy lets them open the Bible and understand it." After 10 or 20 years of hard work on Bible translation, how useful would it be if no one knew to read it? |
