Source: Beyond, April 2, 2025
Everyone deserves to have the Word of God in their heart language. Today, we are closer to seeing the Bible translated into every language than ever before, but significant barriers remain. Over 20% of the world’s people are still waiting for the Bible in their own language.
“Last mile” describes the short final segment of delivery of services or items to customers. Last-mile logistics are usually the most complicated and expensive to complete the service or delivery. This same dynamic occurs in completing the task of translating the Bible into every language.
Many do not yet have the Bible in their own language because they live in areas hostile to the gospel. Unlike traditional translations, where translation teams locate in a place and work together for years, outside translators seeking to do translation in politically restricted and/or hostile regions often cannot gain access to these areas.
Translators who do have access are often faced with working in secret, moving from one location to another and keeping their work secret from friends, family, and the community. Often, due to death threats and persecution, translators wait until the work is completed, secretly taking the finished product to partners to print and share with others. In recent years, there have been numerous incidents of translators in these types of areas being kidnapped and/or killed.
Those of us assisting from the outside must adjust to the new realities and recognize that these men and women risking their lives deserve our best efforts and servant-hearted support instead of asking them to fit into our previous patterns and paradigms of translation.
Read the full story to see how one large network is responding. Let’s pray to get these translations across the finish line!
Also read the latest edition of AfriGO magazine which is focused on Africans in Bible translation.