Moussa Abakar
Lead translator, Language K
The translators
112 translators. Most of them grew up speaking nothing else.
Only those who agreed to be shown appear here, some by first name only. Every one of them is paid a fair stipend by supporters like you.
Teams and consultants
A few of the people at the desks
Write to any of them through the office; we pass every letter on.
Rosa Quispe Mamani
Translator, Southern Quechua
Khamla V.
Translator and typesetter, Language T
Yohannes Dagne
Reviewer and elder, East Africa
Priya S.
Psalms team, Language S
Dr. Samuel Haddad
Translation consultant
Dr. Ruth Ambler
Executive director and linguist
Bao Thach
Typesetting and audio, Duncanville
From the desk
Untie the rope
How a team in northern Cameroon spent three weeks looking for the word for 'forgive', and found it at a goat market.
Dr. Ruth Ambler · Executive director
Every translation has a handful of words that refuse to cooperate. For the Language K team it was forgive. The French Bible everyone used had pardonner, and people knew it the way they knew the words on a tax form.
Moussa's team tried four candidates in the community check. One meant 'to forget', which is not the same thing. Another was what a court does when it drops a fine, which made God sound like a magistrate. The readers were polite about both and convinced by neither.
The goat market
The breakthrough came on a Thursday at the livestock market. A buyer and a seller had argued about a debt for half an hour, then shook hands, and the seller said a phrase Moussa had heard all his life without noticing: I have untied the rope.
When the French Bible says forgive, I understand it. When ours says untie the rope, I feel it.
In the village the phrase means a debt is gone, and that the person who held it chose to let it go. It also carries a picture everyone knows: a tethered animal walking free. The team tested it in five villages. People repeated it back without being asked.
Dr. Haddad checked it against every forgiveness passage in Luke and Acts, and it held. The Lord's Prayer in Language K now asks God to untie our ropes as we untie the ropes of others.
It took three weeks to choose two words. That is about average, and we would not want it any faster.
Every translator is paid by people like you
A translator's monthly stipend ranges from $180 to $420, depending on the local cost of living.