Nkoya speakers of Zambia

 Nan and I are excited to pray with you about the potential of helping see an Nkoya JESUS film funded and produced as part of Mission 865.  Mission 865 is the initiative here at the JESUS Film Project to complete all languages spoken by at least 50,000 people.  These next 865 languages represent some of the most unreached and remote people in the world.  But much as Jesus related the parable of the Lost Sheep, these speakers of Nkoya have not escaped His notice.
 
When it comes to making a new JESUS film translation, one of the greatest challenges is completing the translation of the script.  As we do smaller and smaller people groups, this challenge increases.  The reason for this is that these people groups are more remote, there is less likelihood that they even have a written language (an oral language with no formal alphabet) and they usually have no portions of scripture in their language.

That is why we have had a partnerships with groups like Wycliffe Bible translators and SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) for many years.  The basis of the JESUS film script was the gospel of Luke, so once this book of the Bible has been translated into the local language we are MUCH closer to what is needed for the JESUS film script.

In the case of the Nkoya language, The Seed Company (a division of Wycliffe) has been working in this area of Zambia for a while.  I had heard previously that the gospels of Luke and Mark were translated into Nkoya, but this report indicates a New Testament is complete and there is interest in working on an Old Testament translation.  The regions where Nkoya is spoken in Zambia are outlined in red.  Apparently Nkoya language materials have been burned and many Nkoya forced to speak Lozi - which is an example of why these people struggle to maintain their identity and language - and why a Bible translation in their language (and a JESUS film translation) are needed so greatly.

 I'll update this blog entry with the final website link for this project as we give you updates, pictures and videos related to this project - as they become available.  For now -
  • Please pray for the translators as they work from the Gospel of Luke in Nkoya to make a JESUS film script translation.  
  • Pray that they make good progress in preparation for the next script review in March of 2014.

Comments

  1. Unknown8:28 AM

    Is the Jesus Film Project for the Nkoya language being "officially" funded, or has it been put on hold?

    ReplyDelete
  2. irvnnan10:46 AM

    Yes, the language was fully funded earlier in the year! Not only that but an extra gift for $2000 was given that will go toward some of the initial distribution work that will take place among the Nkoya speakers once the translation is done.

    The script is done, but they can't record right now because it is the rainy season in Zambia. The tentative plan at this point is to record the JESUS film in Nkoya on or after April of next year - Lord willing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Let me know what you think. Was this interesting to you? What else would you like to hear about?
thanks for taking the time to comment!
Irv

Popular posts from this blog

The vagaries of getting older...

Image
 Okay - I haven't updated the blog in a while.  I've been on a journey which has lately involved the quest to get good sleep - deep restful sleep.  Ah the vagaries of getting older.  It is amazing how much sleep affects our outlook and creativity, even our objectivity about life.  I've concluded I'm not much of a blogger, much less when this was more of a problem for me.  But I am improving as I consult with doctors, learn new techniques of getting back to sleep and the role of walking this out with Jesus.   I just went to the 50th anniversary of SIGGRAPH last month.  I have loved computer graphics ever since I saw Star Wars, the Wrath of Khan and Tron.  Once I bought my first computer in 1980 and started writing programs to generate my own images I was clear that this would somehow be part of my life.  I had met Jim Blinn briefly on a tour of JPL  (Jim had been rendering images of the planets for the Voyager flyby - he was so influential and early that there is a compu
Read more

frances goeth but whence Ivan?

We made it...but it is wet and sloppy here. This storm was a slow mover and dumped a lot of rain for the last day or two...even today now that the eye went over Tampa and is heading up toward the panhandle of Florida, the storm is so big that the eastern side of the circulation is over the whole state and bring winds from north to south with rain and thunderstorms all day. Wacky! I made a quick emergency roof repair yesterday since we were having some leaks, and now I'm back up to the roof when it stops raining to tack down some plastic over another section. We had power restored in about 12 hours so that was a real praise to the Lord. The energy crews are really on the ball here and there were already extra crews here because of Charley. Sounds like we were one of about 20% or less that got it back so soon. Now they tell us hurricane Ivan is brewing and that 'cone of probability' that weather people show keeps pointing to us again along with the East Coast and
Read more

File Zero, Virtual Production & bridging the gap to real history!

Image
  We recently had a chance to film an ending for the File Zero (aka Archivo Cero) animated web series that we worked on back in 2008-2010 for about 18 months.  An opportunity came up to put File Zero into a broadcast rotation but it needed to be transformed from a 14-episode web series into a 50 minute video suitable for broadcast with the close that bridges from the series content (set in the future) and relating it to the story of Jesus referenced in the series.  Here is some 'Making of footage' and how we used 'Virtual Production' and the Unreal Engine to make the video. If  you want to see the end of File Zero ( episode 14 ) with this new close, check out the video below. Thank you to Jeff, Dom, Andres, Daniel, Eileen, Alex, Kashmere, Brent, Melissa, Mike, Vance, Marc, Marcos and the crew.  Please forgive me if I'm forgetting anyone else!  - Irv
Read more