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So what's the new average translation time, taking into account your new tools and new partnerships?

[Formerly], the average New Testament generally took about 17 years. I think now we're probably looking at maybe 13. You're not finding many entire Bibles that are done in less than 20 years.

Are most of the remaining languages pretty small?

The majority of languages that are left have from a few hundred to a few thousand speakers. They're still on the list because there is a vibrant language community in them determined to make this happen. Others have several thousand or a hundred thousand speakers.

What areas of the world need the most translations?

There are three main areas. One is the Papua New Guinea and Indonesia archipelago. There are roughly a thousand languages there that need translation. The Indonesia needs are staggering. Second is Central and East Asia, with more than 700 translation needs. The third major area is in Central Africa, plus Nigeria, with perhaps 700 languages needing translation.

What percentage of your translators are nationals as opposed to the typical missionary from the West?

I would say 80 percent, but that would be a conservative number. Some informed sources are saying that perhaps 90 percent of the members of the world's Bible translation force are native speakers.

So at least for Westerners, it's becoming more about training and less about being a pioneer missionary?

I would probably modify the word training just a bit. People tend to think of it more as facilitating. It's best to think of it more as capacity building, which is much bigger than just training. It's equipping and enabling, it's sharing what expertise the Lord has given us, building into their lives, and of course, their building into our lives.

Are other Bible translation agencies on board with Vision 2025?

If Vision 2025 is going to be accomplished, it's going to have to be a partnership. It's not Wycliffe members off doing their thing, New Tribes off doing their thing. I think other agencies have unconsciously been moving toward the same goal, though they haven't necessarily expressed it in the same formal terms.

What are the greatest needs for Vision 2025 now?

Since translation is being done by native speakers, they need translation helps. Our team in Dallas is preparing something that hasn't been done before: a set of basic translation commentaries, which are geared toward translators who do not speak English as a first language. Our expectation is that this will help those with only ten years of education. These helps are designed to be used with help from a consultant or translation adviser.

Our board of directors has identified nine major world languages they'd like to see translation helps developed in. So we network with others who can help with languages such as Spanish, French, Indonesian, Russian, and so on.

Not long after Vision 2025 was adopted, I was meeting with one of our partner organizations. They said to me, "What's the biggest need of Vision 2025?" I said it was finding enough prayer partners. In fact, John Watters, our international executive director, has said, "Prayer is our greatest strategic response and our greatest resource." To see Vision 2025 happen is going to take a new host of people involved in prayer like we've never seen before, and a lot of creative strategies.

We can definitely improve our work by taking advantage of new advances in our field. We've learned a lot about human communication in the last two decades and about semantics, and about how language works. That needs to be incorporated into our translation efforts. Doesn't God's Word require the best that we can give it?

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February 2005, Vol. 49, No. 2