Giving The Bible To The

South Pacific

rE British and Foreign Bible Society has now translated the Bible or sections of the Bible, into over 1,000 distinct languages.

Recently the Council of the Society in Australia, which is responsible for work in the islands of the South Pacific, New Guinea and French Indo-China, published a small book (“Living Languages”) with the object of making the work of the society better known.

The book was written by William H.

Rainey, Commonwealth Secretary of the Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geo graphical Society.

He points out that no people, no matter how primitive or backward, lack lan guage, and that every language has a word for their own particular god or gods, Mr. Rainey stresses the fact that it is the missionary who learns the new lan guage and does the work of translating, the Society only publishes the work.

Therefore, through Mr. Rainey’s story, we learn much of the translation work of members of various Missionary Societies.

Greatest difficulty has been encountered in the South-west Pacific area where there are literally hundreds of languages, some of which are understood by only a small group of people. The Society does not approve of the use of Pidgin English for Bible translation purposes and in every case has endeavoured to select a widely understood dialect as the lingua franca of a specific area. For example the Blanche Bay dialect has been used to serve in New Guinea, the Rabaul-Kokopo area and, as well, the Duke of Yorks, New Ireland and New Hanover. Similarly, Dobuan has been used as a lingua franca for a large part of Papua.