As part of their regular work routine, the Simbiti translation team invited a Simbiti man to come to the translation office in Musoma town for a couple days. His job was to listen to them read Luke chapters 7 through 15 in his language, Simbiti, and help them improve their translation.

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When we finished drafting chapters 12-20 of Genesis, we traveled to a small Zanaki village named Mirwa to read the chapters aloud to people and see if they understood them or not and to get help with a few difficult words.  In Mirwa, we were fortunate to have a large group of people, mostly non-Christians, who wanted to listen to the stories about Abraham.

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In January I went to Mpanda in west Tanzania, near Lake Tanganyika, together with three other colleagues.  We had a meeting with some Bishops and pastors from various churches with whom we are planning to start work later this year.  After the meeting we met a lady outside.  We found out that she is Ndali and we told her that there is literature in her language.

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The Jita translators and I recently spent two weeks with a translation consultant working on the first fourteen chapters of Acts.  One day we encountered an interesting problem in Acts 10:33a.  It's one of those half-verses that doesn't have anything particularly theological in it, so it didn't seem likely to have any translation issues.

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Some fifty years ago, when the Temi villages were comprised of a few hundred people, the entire village was surrounded by a thick thorn hedge. The only entrances were heavily fortified and guarded by the young warriors, who defended the villages against raiders. Read more...