Work has started on the Southern Mbam Oral Bible Translation project. Over three years, teams will translate between 2,500 and 3,500 verses of the New Testament into Hijuk and Mbula, two languages of the Centre Region, and publish them as audio.
Why not print
Both communities are predominantly oral. A printed New Testament in either language would sit unread for a generation while literacy caught up with it. Translating aloud puts Scripture into use straight away, in the form the community already uses to carry everything else it knows — its history, its law, its poetry.
The first workshop
The training workshop for Hijuk and Mbula oral translators ran in August. The teams worked through the method, the recording process, and the checking steps that keep an oral translation accountable to the source in the same way a written one is.
- Translate 2,500 to 3,500 New Testament verses orally.
- Publish completed verses in audio format.
- Distribute SD cards carrying digital Hijuk and Mbula Scripture every year.
- Southern Mbam
- Oral translation