Translating Bible

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32885, 7 April 1972, Page 4

Translating Bible

A former crusade director for the Billy Graham evangelistic team, Mr D. W. Piatt, is in Christchurch campaigning for church and Christian involvement in a world-wide Bible translation crusade. At present there were more than 2000 ethnic minority { -roups — more than 100 milion people — without a written language, and without an alphabet to begin translating scripture, Mr Piatt said. Mr Piatt left the Graham team in June last year to become the president of Final Advance for Scripture Translation (F.A.S.T.). He said the organisation wanted to act as a catalyst to churches of all denominations in translating the Bible into more than 2000 languages. F.A.S.T. had received a proclamation from President Nixon designating the year 1971, as the world minority language groups, to assist it in its task of translating the Bible. It intended to try for a similar proclamation from the Government of New Zealand, he said. Mr Piatt said that New Zealand was strategically placed to contribute to translation work in South-East Asia. The programme would begin at local levels in churches in Sunday schools throughout New Zealand, as people were appointed by ministers to be responsible for collecting and distributing information gathered from missionaries and workers by the F.A.S.T. team. After this an active recruitment programme for workers and translators would be held through one of the eight Summer Institutes of Linguistics in the world.