Clear is accelerating the faithful translation of Scripture until all people can access God’s Word in their own language. We partner with Great Commission organizations to give Bible translators visibility into the meaning and structure of the original Greek and Hebrew and empower them to check their work as they draft. The goal is to increase accuracy while reducing external dependencies and shortening the overall project time. Here are two case studies.
Dedua – Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (PNG), a small island north of Australia, is home to nearly 850 languages, making it the most linguistically diverse place on earth. In the 1960’s, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of PNG. The Peace Child book and movie told their unforgettable story of living among these headhunting cannibals who valued treachery, fattening victims with friendship before the slaughter. In fact, they initially viewed Judas as a hero since he betrayed Jesus. Over time, the Richardsons learned the language, devised a writing system, taught the Sawi to read, and translated the entire New Testament. Eventually, half of the Sawi gave their lives to Christ as a result of having God’s word in their mother tongue.
In the mid-1980’s, Sune and Britt Ceder, a couple sent by the Swedish Alliance Mission, came to PNG to do Bible translation for the Dedua people. They worked for 25 years translating the Bible into the Dedua language. The New Testament in Dedua was dedicated in 2006. By 2016, they finished 13 books from the Old Testament and then retired. Soon after, a team of mother-tongue translators picked up the mantle and continued work on the Dedua Old Testament.
In early 2021, Clear connected with an SIL expert who is helping the Dedua with their Bible translation project. In March 2021, the translation team made a long trek through the jungles of PNG to attend a two-week training session using the ClearEngine-ClearSuite at the SIL training center in Ukarumpa. They used the ClearSuite in conjunction with Paratext (running on the same laptop) to check previously completed work. The ClearSuite helped them to see translation inconsistencies, misspellings, and other errors. They estimated that 80% of the errors that the ClearSuite found likely would not have been found by their previous methods.
The Dedua were excited to take the ClearSuite back home with them on their laptop once this training period was over. Our engineering team made some quick modifications to their prototype which addressed some specific requests. This is a great example of our innovation in action. We can’t wait for the day that the Dedua will dedicate the full Old Testament translation and their people will finally have the complete Word of God in their heart language.
Eggon – Nigeria
The Eggon people live in central Nigeria and have had a completed NT for quite some time. The translation team came together again after many years and translated a draft of the entire Old Testament on their own, on paper! They reached out to us in 2019 and asked if we could help them with this project since they don’t have a translation consultant or any other resources assigned to help them.
Clear’s CTO, Steve Bissell, has deep experience working with teams in central Nigeria and had met some of the Eggon team members previously. When they reached out to us, they were not aware of Steve’s involvement with Clear. It’s amazing how God can bring things together for His glory. The Eggon team began to type their Old Testament translation using laptops. They asked us to help them with checking and correcting their work. Using the ClearSuite-ClearEngine tools, they were able to identify inconsistencies in their translation and fix them. They are now moving forward with their translation project and we are looking forward to the day when they can have the full Bible in the Eggon language.
