I got interested and excited when I read this strategy from the Pacific Islands group! Yes, the need is great and the workers are few so how to reach all the languages of these Pacific Islands? They hope to engage local Christians and empower them by training and consultant help so that they can be involved in Bible translation. Read on to learn more about it! Perhaps you’d like to be involved?
Here's a link to their website.
SIL Pacific Group Isles of the Sea Strategy
The execution of this strategy assumes that God, the Creator of the universe, wants to communicate with all people groups in Micronesia, Polynesia, Fiji and New Caledonia, and that He wants to do this in a language they can understand well enough to grasp the outrageous concept that He Himself has died to pay for their sins.
Ideally, all language groups should have all of the Scriptures available to them in their heart language,
along with hymn books, concordances, and other helps to foster the reading of the Scriptures, regardless of the size of the language group.
We believe that Translation is Revision, in other words, the task in any given language group will continue in coming generations.
We, as members of the Pacific Group, cannot even get close to achieving the ideal, even if we could attract many new recruits to help us in this task. We acknowledge that we are few in number and that the task is huge, far beyond what we can hope to achieve.
If it is true that God wants to communicate clearly with the people of all language groups, then there must be a solution to this problem.
These language groups have long been evanglized and churches exist in all of the communities. We believe that the responsibility for Bible translation lies with the local communities themselves. In all of these communities there are some people who can understand the Scriptures well in a language or languages not their own.
How should these communities be involved in Bible translation work?
This responsibility includes:
- Responsibility to initiate a translation project
- Responsibility to determine the scope of the project
(one Gospel, the New Testament, the entire Bible, etc.)
- Responsibility for the running of the project
(i.e. funding, appointment of translators, etc)
- Responsibility for the style and the quality of the translation
How are we involved with these communities in Bible translation?
These communities lack various skills that are needed to accomplish a good quality translation of the Bible.
These skills exist in the current and future members of the Pacific Group.
It is our responsibility to share our resources and skills with the language groups of the Pacific.
Our responsibilities include:
Responsibility to make church and community leaders aware that they can have the Scriptures in their own language
Responsibility to encourage and challenge them to initiate a translation project and to take the responsibility for that project
Responsibility to serve those language groups that begin Bible translation by helping supply the skills that they are lacking
Responsibility to help them achieve a translation of good quality
Responsibility to train the members of the translation teams to the highest possible level in the skills required to achieve a good quality translation
Responsibility to continue supplying skills and training local translation teams, as necessary
Isles of the Sea a comprehensive project
The Isles of the Sea project is a truly multi-dimensional comprehensive project:
1. Comprehensive in the number of languages involved
We endeavour to assist ALL the languages of New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and Micronesia that have shown a clear commitment to do Bible translation in their language.
2. Comprehensive in the scope of each translation project
We endeavour to assist each language group that has shown clear commitment to do Bible translation ,
to achieve WHATEVER translation goal they would like to achieve.
3. The Isles of the Sea project is comprehensive in the people involved in these projects
We endeavour to motivate, recruit, train and mentor WHOEVER the Lord calls to this task so that language groups that have shown commitment to a translation project can do their work well.
Current need: translation advisor team in Micronesia
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