'I'm finally understanding that translation is about people'

How the Alliance and YWAM discovered common ground

Bryan Harmelink teaches during the LTMG course in Bogotá 2024. Photo: Gwen Davies

While teaching his first group of YWAM students, Bryan Harmelink summed up his lecture: ‘In a sense, Bible translation is really about knowing God and making him known.’

Students sat in silence for a few moments. Then one of them said quietly, ‘Do you realise that you just said the motto of YWAM—“to know God and make him known”?’

That was just one of many God-orchestrated moments of discovery, says Bryan, now Director of Collaboration for the Wycliffe Global Alliance, as he developed the course, Language and Translation in the Mission of God. He later learned that Loren Cunningham, who started YWAM (Youth With A Mission), had a longtime vision for involvement in Bible translation. 

Another student in that first University of the Nations course remarked, ‘I’m finally understanding that translation is about people.’ 

Bryan takes that thought further. Bible translation, he says, seeks ways to use our identities and cultural and linguistic abilities to translate Scripture in the most effective way—‘in very local ways, that will resonate with people who use these different languages.’

‘One of my favourite metaphors recently for thinking about the quality of translation is a tuning fork,’ he says. ‘You play a note on the piano that corresponds to the note of the tuning fork, and the tuning fork vibrates. That’s resonance. … I like to think about Scripture that is translated with such quality of expression … that it so resonates with the users of that language that they say, “This, this is God speaking to me!”’

Loidih Dina Rojas Cusi (AIDIA), Ruth Quispe (ACIEP-AIDIA Peru), and Danilo Zuhul (MOVIDA Colombia) confer during a small group discussion while course staff work in the background. Photo: Gwen Davies

Story: Gwen Davies and Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance

Photos: Gwen Davies

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