In and through a Small Community
After almost 50 years of translation work, the Barlig people in Mountain Province of the Philippines now have the whole Bible in their heart language – Finallig. While it may have felt like a long, uphill climb, this language community of about 6,000 speakers persevered to finish translating the Bible by themselves. And what they have done has not only blessed their own community, but also has set an example for a neighbouring language group waiting for God's Word.
Translating the Bible IN Barlig
Traditional dance was performed during the Barlig Bible celebration. (Photo: Ablaze Media)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the final stage of completing the Finallig Bible was full of challenges. Lockdowns throughout the Philippines made it difficult, if not impossible, for the team to get paper for printing, and to deliver cartons of printed Bibles to the Barlig area afterward.
Although delayed, the Bible celebration was held at last on 28 May, 2022.
The completion of the Finallig Bible took a village—the immeasurable effort and commitment of Bible translators from the U.S., Japan and Barlig, on top of enormous prayer, financial and other support from around the world. When friends and supporters abroad heard about the celebration plan, many decided to go and share the joy with the Barlig people on this special day.
To the Barlig people, a couple of familiar faces stood out among the guests coming from other parts of the Philippines and overseas. Dave and Joan Ohlson (U.S.) pioneered the Barlig translation project. Dave and Joan moved here in 1975 to start translation after Dave did a language survey in the Barlig area.
Dave Ohlson (second left), Fukuda San (far right) and two elders from the Barlig village took a photo together after the celebration. (Photo: Fukuda San’s Facebook)
In 1982, Dave became director of SIL Philippines. Though feeling reluctant, they had to leave Barlig and the people they had grown to love. By the time they were ready to move, another young couple, Takashi and Aiko Fukuda (Japan) was assigned to Barlig to continue the work. At the time, the Fukudas were in Kadaclan, a neighbouring language area. They moved to Barlig in 1984. Another Wycliffe Japan translator, Kiyoko Torakawa, joined them that same year. In 1999, a Canadian couple, Rundall and Judi Maree, was assigned to be the project managers.
The FSS Phase
According to Takashi (known as Fukuda San), most of the work in Barlig was initiated by expat workers before 2000. Then in 2003, the Fialikia* Scripture Society (FSS), a local organisation, was formed to take up the Barlig translation project. It sprung from a common consent and an important decision in 2000— the Barlig translators will carry on the translation of the whole Bible to completion. Thus, three local translators were hired and trained to continue the translation alongside Kiyoko and other expat workers. When the Finallig New Testament was completed in 2004, FSS started the work of the Old Testament right away.
* Fialikia is the root word for Finallig
“During pre-FSS phase, the Ohlsons, the Fukudas, and Kiyoko Torakawa produced various books of the New and Old Testament and also many literacy materials,” Fukuda San recalled. “They were other tongue translators who laid a good foundation for the future work by mother tongue translators (MTTs).”
Fukuda San was glad to see how the Barlig people embraced their own project. He also believes all 2,000-plus remaining translation projects in the world will be largely carried out by MTTs.
“FSS is a good example of MTT work,” Fukuda San said. “They have a functioning board, mother tongue translators and community support. The board members are ordinary people like teachers in local schools, municipal office workers and farmers. The translators are also ordinary people, yet they have been carrying this heavy responsibility for more than 20 years and now the entire Bible in the Barlig language is done.”
The three Barlig translators (from left to right): Meriam Challiis, Doralyn Challoy and Veronica Pinos-an, and the Finallig Bibles. (Photo: Ablaze Media)
While some people may believe that spending 50 years to complete a translation is too slow, Fukuda San understands differently.
“It seems God’s work is slow at times…. We just need to ask the Lord [for mercy] so that we can walk closer to him and align ourselves with him. It is his work, not ours. We are called to join him in his ministry.”
Translating the Bible THROUGH Barlig
The Barlig people have completed the mission of translating the whole Bible into their language. But their work is not finished.
Also living in the Eastern Bontoc area, the Kadaclan people speak a language closely related to Finallig. Yet, they do not fully understand Finallig and desire to access God’s Word in their own dialect. The Kadaclan church leaders asked FSS for help and they came up with a plan that the Kadaclan New Testament will be adapted from the Finallig translation. The Kadaclan project was started in 2019 with three local translators who use Finallig New Testament as the source language. Team members are excited as they are at the stage for consultant check currently and looking forward to a celebration ceremony in 2024.
A Translator’s Prayer
Like the first translator Dave, Fukuda San also had to leave Barlig after serving there a few years. He moved back to Japan to become Wycliffe Japan’s director in 1987 and continued the translation work remotely until 1994. Even so, Barlig still holds a big piece of his heart. Fukuda San keeps going back as he leads short-term missions from Japan and continues to encourage prayers and other support to the project.
He prays that the FSS will continue to grow as it interacts meaningfully with other churches and organisations, and that it will help the Barlig and Kadaclan people to engage with the Scriptures in collaboration with local denominations, churches and mission organisations.
Story: Ling Lam, Wycliffe Global Alliance
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05/2025 Global
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Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI
Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? 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We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.
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