BY GOSNELL L.O.R. YORKE

ITHIN NEARLY 2,000 OF THE world's 6,000 languages spoken on the continent, Africa has long been a beehive of activity for Bible translation. Beginning in the late eighteenth-century missionary expansion of the Christian church in Africa, early missionary societies actively promoted Bible translation on the continent as a first step toward evangelization. During the past 200 years a great variety of organizations and missionary enterprises have initiated projects or worked collaboratively to ensure that Africa's millions would have access to the Word of God in clear, readable translations.

Today the United Bible Societies (UBS) is the major Bible translation agency not only in Africa but throughout the world. UBS dates its official origin to May 9, 1946, in England, but its roots go back to both the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society in the early nineteenth century. The UBS currently encompasses more than 150 National Bible Societies (NBS's) and spans more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its four translation regions include Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe-Middle East.

Seventh-day Adventists have long supported the work of the UBS as an interdenominational agency, even while we have usually avoided membership in ecumenical councils. The UBS is not a church or even a conglomeration of churches. Rather, it is a servant of all the churches, and it is driven by the fundamental conviction that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that, as the inspired Word of God, it is the book of the Church-of all the Christian churches.

As Adventists, we have also long seen the wisdom in not producing for ourselves official translations of the Bible as the Jehovah's Witnesses are known to do. We have long recognized that a neutral "service provider" such as the UBS is best positioned to translate, produce, and distribute Bibles in various languages of the world-translations and versions that we can then use in our preaching and teaching ministries and for evangelistic purposes.

How It All Began
In the third and fourth centuries A.D. there was a translation of the Bible into the Bohairic and Sahidic dialects of Coptic in Egypt. A translation of the Bible in Geez (Ethiopia) was made in the fifth and sixth centuries. The first New Testament was printed and published in Africa in Geez in 1549, and the first biblical passage translated into an African language south of the Sahara was the Lord's Prayer in 1624. The first portion or complete book of the Bible translated and published in a sub-Saharan African language was the Gospel of Mark in Bullom (Sierra Leone) in 1816.

The first complete Bible was in Malagasy (Madagascar) in 1835; in Tswana (Botswana and South Africa) in 1857; in Xhosa (South Africa) in 1859; in Zulu (also South Africa) in 1883; and in Ga (Ghana) in 1866. In East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) there is also a rich legacy of Bible translations in both Swahili (Kenya and Tanzania) and Luganda (Uganda) dating to the arrival in 1844 of Johann Krapf, a German Lutheran missionary who traveled to East Africa.

The active participation of Adventists in Bible translation in Africa goes back at least to the 1930s in what was then Tanganyika (now the United Republic of Tanzania). In collaboration with the Cambridge and Oxford-based Universities Mission to Central Africa, the Church Missionary Society, and the (German) Leipzig, Berlin, Bethel, and Moravian Missions, competent Adventist speakers of the language helped produce a translation of the Bible in Swahili. Adventists also assisted when African scholars and translators themselves were totally responsible for a new translation of the Bible in Swahili, a version called Habari Njema (Good News) and published jointly by the Bible Societies of Kenya and Tanzania in 1995. The record also indicates that there was Adventist involvement in the translation of the current Luganda Bible as well.

What the United Bible Society Does
The UBS is committed to making the Bible available in the language of the heart (the mother tongue) in an appropriate format such as print, audio, video, or braille, and at an affordable price. Further, the translation should be done in such a way as to encourage the end user to interact intelligently with it. In terms of its present translation theory, the UBS translates the Bible in a manner that is faithful to the original languages of Scripture (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) but at the same time clear and natural-sounding in the "target" or "receptor" language (the native language) as well. That would explain, for example, why Western versions such as the Contemporary English Version, the Gute Nachricht Bibel (German), Nieuwe Bijbel Vertaling (Dutch), Dios Habla Hoy (Spanish), A Boa Nova (Portuguese), A Bíblia na Linguagem de Hoje (Brazilian Portuguese), and La Bible Français Courant (French) read and sound the modern way they do.

Contrary to what used to be the case during the missionary era, Bible translators working under the direction of the UBS in Africa and elsewhere (such as in the Asia-Pacific region) are now competent mother tongue speakers of the particular languages themselves. No longer is it the case that one or more Western missionaries would take the lead and then have a handful of native speakers serve as "language informers." This shift in procedure is more than just a mere reflection of a larger postcolonial drive toward self-determination in the realm of language. Rather, it draws on new scientific insights about language. It points to the profound relationship that exists between the human brain and language acquisition on the one hand, and language and society/culture on the other. A language is far more than nouns, verbs, and prepositions. It mirrors (and points to) a whole philosophy of life, a whole worldview. For that reason it is a realm into which the "outsider" cannot fully enter, but one that ultimately is reserved for the native language speaker, one who has the capacity to actually dream in that particular language.

The UBS places the competent native tongue speaker of the language at the very heart of the translation task-both as a member of the translation team itself as well as a member of the larger group of language reviewers, those whose task it is to ensure that the translation is both clear and natural-sounding in the native tongue.

Surrounding this core of native tongue speakers are others who provide the support system, including the administrators of the National Bible Society and the various churches committed to Bible translation. Adventists have been involved in each level of the UBS effort. A clearer picture of that long-term involvement is now emerging as persons like me travel and encourage cooperation with the UBS.

The Adventist Connection
Adventist involvement in Bible translation in Africa includes at least seven kinds of activity. As has been the case with the American Bible Society, Adventist ministers and others have either participated or now participate on the boards of several national Bible societies in Africa, including those of Angola, Ghana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Seychelles, Tanzania, and Uganda.

And as is true in Uruguay, Adventist ministers and others also serve national Bible societies in Lesotho, Mauritius, and Uganda as chief executive officers. Support personnel for national Bible societies work in Malawi and Mauritius.

Adventists are actively engaged as Bible translators as well. Recent translations of Portuguese, Polish, and Russian language versions included Adventist translators. In Africa this translation work includes projects in these languages and regions: Ikalanga in Botswana; Kisii in Kenya; Luganda in Uganda; Mambwe-Lungu in Zambia; Swahili in East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania); and Yoruba in Nigeria. Adventist language reviewers, who check to ensure the natural-sounding flow of the translation, work in: Umbundu in Angola; Mauritian Creole (in Mauritius); and Bemba in Zambia.

A number of Adventist congregations and regions either organize annual Bible Sabbaths for the financial support of the National Bible Society or set aside a special offering, much like what was done at the General Conference session in Toronto in 2000 in relation to the American Bible Society. In Africa these include the Transvaal Conference in South Africa and the field in Namibia Field next door (both members of the current Southern Africa-Indian Ocean Division). In addition, there have also been occasions where the local church made space available to hold important Bible Society meetings. Such was the case in 1999 when the Central church in Luanda, Angola, opened its doors to host a meeting of representatives of the entire Christian community as the group deliberated about beginning the translation of the Bible into Kikongo and Umbundu, two of Angola's indigenous languages.

The Adventist Church is known across Africa as a major purchaser and consumer of the Bible Societies' products. At times it also adds its voice to that of other churches in calling for the establishment of Bible Society work in particular countries; such as was the case in Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe, two Portuguese-speaking countries in West Africa. When the UBS had its World Assembly in Africa (South Africa) in October 2000, the Southern Africa Union's official representatives were there as well.

In 1995, while serving as an interdivision worker at our university in Kenya (the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton), I was invited by the UBS to join its ranks as a translation consultant (TC) for the Africa Region. A TC is one who is directly responsible for mentoring and monitoring translators in their ongoing task of translating for themselves and their communities the Bible into their own native tongues. The TC team includes about 100 specialists worldwide with about 25 serving UBS in Africa. By training they are either biblical scholars, linguists, or cultural anthropologists, with each TC having to become functionally competent. Ultimately the translation consultant's role is to determine, through various checking strategies, when the translation draft fulfills all the criteria of a good and acceptable translation, and therefore merits being published and distributed as the inspired Word of God.

The General Conference readily granted approval to me, as an ordained minister and interdivision worker, to delink from full-time employment with the church and to serve as a full-time translation consultant of the UBS since July 1996 while at the same time retaining my ministerial credentials. In addition, a new working policy has since been drafted that regularizes this pioneering arrangement and makes it possible for any other appropriately qualified Adventist minister to serve as a full-time UBS translation consultant with credentials from the church.

Part of my role is thus focused on ensuring, for example, that the biblical text in its entirety is faithfully translated from the original languages of Scripture into the various indigenous languages of Africa. This includes the Sabbath and other relevant texts.

Bible translation in Africa, as currently spearheaded by the UBS, is very much alive and well. And so is the support and participation of individual Adventists and the church at various levels, in various ways, and in various countries across the continent. That work has never been more urgent than now, as Africa vibrates with both old and new religious movements whose claims on believers sometimes shake the foundation of the whole social order.

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Gosnell L.O.R. Yorke is a translation consultant for the United Bible Societies (Africa Region).