Translation Archives - Biblica Europe

Sarah finds hope in Cairo

Posted on October 15, 2024October 28, 2024 by Gary O'Rourke

“The teachings of the Gospel brought me back to life.”

Sarah married young, like many Egyptian Muslim women. But her extremist husband had a fiery temper and began to abuse her both emotionally and physically. When the couple had two sons, he soon began to abuse them as well.

Women in this cultural environment don’t have equal rights – there is little they can do about domestic abuse, as they are expected to be disciplined within the home. Sarah said:

“My husband’s belief was that a good Muslim wife doesn’t object or express her opinion; she serves and silently obeys orders. The world around me was dark and sad. Life at home was a nightmare, and tears never left my eyes.”

But at work, Sarah met a Christian called Lydia, who radiated a different kind of happiness. Sarah knew that Lydia had financial difficulties and other troubles, but her heart seemed to be continually filled with peace.

One day, with tears streaming down her face, Sarah poured out her feelings of unworthiness and despair, asking God why He had allowed so much suffering in her life. Looking for answers, she went to Lydia and asked, “Is it your faith that fills your heart with peace?”

Lydia began to explain the message of salvation to Sarah, who was deeply touched.

What’s really in the Bible?

At work, Lydia gave Sarah a Bible, and helped her to read it. As she started reading, she was initially confused and scared. She was so surprised to see the contradictions between the extremist Islamic beliefs she had been taught all her life and the compassionate words of Jesus. It gave her a deep desire to know more about the Christian faith.

Sarah went on reading the Bible, noting down the differences between the Bible and the Qu’ran. Day by day, she became convinced of the teachings she found in the New Testament. She found wisdom and comfort at last.

Jesus’ message transformed everything

Sarah says:

“The Bible became my daily companion; I read it every day. It was nourishment for my mind, solace for my heart, and peace for my life.

“After the first year of my experience with the Gospel, I had been transformed into a different person that I didn’t know existed within me. The teachings of the Gospel brought me back to life after I thought I had lost it forever.”

–

*Names have been changed to protect the women’s identities. Thank you to our partner in North Africa, Open Doors.

We found treasure in Ukraine

Posted on August 4, 2024October 28, 2024 by Biblica Europe

My name is Olena. I grew up in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region.

In February 2022, my husband and I were expecting our second child, a little boy. Our daughter was four and a half.

On February 24, we woke up to the sound of war. A few hours later, the city was under heavy shelling. All my friends were sent home from work.

A month of fear

We didn’t have a basement, so there was nowhere to hide from the rockets. For almost a month, we lived in complete fear, hiding with our daughter as best we could, sleeping in the corridors and in bomb shelters. Three houses on our street were completely destroyed.

At the end of March, my doctor told me they were no longer accepting patients and I’d have to look for a maternity hospital in another city. Volunteers took us out and brought us to Poltava, about 180 miles away, where our baby boy was born. It took almost all of our savings to relocate.

A child leads the way

About a month later, we were invited to the local church. For several months, we came solely for humanitarian aid. There were always people there ready to talk and support us, but we never took them up on it.

In May, my daughter and I were invited to a children’s club. We began attending these events from time to time, but all these stories remained mere fairy tales for me.

It was our daughter who became most interested in God. She always asked questions about Him and wanted to watch cartoons about God. I didn’t know much and couldn’t answer her questions, but when we were invited to a service last winter, my husband and I went together. Our child was given a New Testament – the Treasure Hunt Bible. It was written for children, but we were very interested in reading it ourselves! It had lots of questions in it that we could all think about together.

The most valuable treasure

Our daughter made us pray and read this Bible with her every day. I thank God that last autumn, my husband came to faith, and in the winter, so did I.

In this new town, we found the most valuable thing – faith in God! It all started with a children’s book, but now our lives have completely changed.

You sent this Bible to Olena’s family!

Do you remember our 2022 Christmas appeal? Many of you gave generously to send Treasure Hunt Bibles, newly-translated into Ukrainian, to children experiencing their first Christmas as refugees. Olena’s little girl was one of them. A £5 Christmas present has changed the lives of her whole family forever. Thank you so much from Olena and us!

To support this ministry and others like it, you can give a gift here today.

A song from a six-year old

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Biblica Europe

Matthew* is only six years old and has already been through brain cancer surgery.

Despite all this, this little Egyptian boy still wanted to pick up his guitar and sing a song for us – a song of praise to his Father God!

Matthew came to know a God who is always with us through thick and thin, thanks to receiving a children’s Bible in his own mother tongue, colloquial Egyptian.

A child’s mother tongue

This collection of Bible stories was one of the first Christian resources published for children in the Egyptian dialect – the first language that most Egyptian kids learn to speak. It’s much easier for young people to understand than material in formal classical Arabic.

Now God speaks to children through the Bible using just the same language as their mums, dads and friends. They understand he’s not a God who is far-off and hard to reach, but one who is close like their family.

God is close

Matthew had struggled with all the medical treatment he had to have. But now he knows that God loves him, is close, and will never leave him, no matter what he goes through. His joyful song in the midst of such a hard time shows this is a reality for him, giving him life and strength every day.

Matthew’s Bible was translated and provided thanks to the generosity of people like you donating to Biblica. You can do something amazing like this by donating today:

To support this ministry and others like it, you can give a gift here today.

*Not his real name

Mistakes and miracles – how God’s Word reaches Iranians

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Biblica Europe

A couple of years ago, Biblica completed the first translation of the whole Bible into modern Farsi, the official language of Iran. In one recent year, 300,000 Bibles were received by Iranians hungry to read them… despite the fact that it’s against the law to distribute the Bible in Farsi.

Our brave distribution partners tell us one incredible story after another about how Jesus is speaking to Iranians and miraculously providing Bibles to people seeking them.

The taxi driver and the box

In one Iranian city lives a man who works as a taxi driver.

One day, he picked up a passenger who had a box sitting next to him on the back seat. As this passenger left the car, he forgot to take his box. The driver thought he would contact him to pick it up the next day. He took the parcel home with him for safekeeping.

The thing is, this taxi driver was also a house church leader. That night, the secret church meeting would be at his house. For many years, these ten believers had gathered regularly, sharing one Bible between them – the one belonging to the taxi driver. The ten of them had been praying for months: “Lord, we would each like to have our own Bible.”

This particular night, when it was time to pray they said, “Let’s pray for Bibles again!”

As they prayed, the group leader suddenly wanted to know what was inside the box that had been left in his taxi. He got up very quietly and walked into the kitchen where he’d put it. He opened the box, and, astonished, brought it out to the praying group.

What was inside the box? Ten Bibles! The group was so, so happy.

The Lord delivers!

The man who left that box of Bibles in the taxi was one of our partners’ delivery guys. His role in getting Bibles to Iranians who need them is to collect the Bibles from a secret, safe warehouse and then carefully deliver them to house church leaders. Sometimes the delivery guys are just guided by the Holy Spirit about where to take the Bibles.

We don’t think this brother meant to leave those 10 Bibles in the taxi – he didn’t know the driver was a house church leader. But God knew very well. Our partner said:

“It gives me goosebumps to think about the Holy Spirit working together with people, fallible humans, and even using their mistakes.”

Your impact is huge

Our partner in the Middle East has a message for everyone who gives to Biblica:

“I want to personally thank you for making the financial investment in Biblica to make the Farsi Bible translation possible. God is using your gifts and multiplying them, sometimes more than tenfold.

“Now the translation is done, we need funding to print more copies. We can’t start printing Bibles until the money’s in. Anyone reading this can make it possible for more people in the Middle East to read the Bible, which for many will be their first time.”

To support this ministry and others like it, you can give a gift here today.

A ‘lite’ Bible app reaches 70 more countries

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Biblica Europe

Although technology has made it easier than ever to share God’s Word around the globe, most smartphones are less powerful in the developing world than they are in developed nations, and most users have a lot less data to use. This means the average person has remained cut off from digital Bible apps like YouVersion.

Until now, that is.

This year, YouVersion partnered with Biblica to design, pilot, and launch Bible App Lite — a lightweight Bible app specifically designed for people in developing communities.

“Lightweight” means that the app is exponentially smaller in terms of megabytes while still offering key Bible engagement features in an offline context, including the full text of the NIV.

More downloads than TikTok

After a pilot in Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, Bible App Lite is now used in over 70 countries around the world. More than 16 million people have installed Bible App Lite in the last 12 months. More importantly, there’s over 1 million people using it every single day. And in multiple African app stores (Kenya, Uganda, and DRC), this digital Bible has even ranked as the No. 1 overall app —more popular than TikTok and Facebook!

“God is using this app — not just to get the Bible into people’s hands, but also into their hearts,” says YouVersion Founder and CEO Bobby Gruenewald. “Our desire is to reach every person, in every part of the world, with God’s Word in their heart language.”

Bobby adds, “Our team loves Biblica. We couldn’t do what we do without you.”

The stats

The new Bible App Lite:

16 million total users
1 million daily users
The number 1 app in multiple African app stores

We keep innovating to share the Bible everywhere

Technology like this is a gamechanger in getting the Bible to previously inaccessible places. In many countries it’ s much easier to download an app than get your hands on a paper Bible. Last year, we launched 53 more single language Bible apps for basic smartphones.

Read more about the impact of your support
over the last year in our inspiring annual report.

One Man and a Bible

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Biblica Europe

We were recently contacted by Pedja from Serbia who had received a new Bible in the Serbian language (New Serbian Translation). Delighted with his new Bible, which he described as ‘perfect’, Pedja was keen to know more about the translation process, and we were keen to know more about how he received the Bible and what it means to him.

Despite being a predominantly Christian country, up until recently Serbian Christians only had access to old Bible texts. When Biblica was finalising a new Serbian translation back in 2017, it was said by Jim Courter (Global Bible Translation Consultant with Biblica) that “The Serbian people will soon have a Bible translation that has been carefully done from the original language texts by experts in those languages. The language and style are those in use in contemporary literature, but still in a form that reflects the dignity of the Word of God. Such a translation has not been available to the Serbian people until now.”

To answer Pedja’s more technical questions, Jim Courter recently added The Serbian translation was done by Greek and Hebrew scholars who used the original language texts as their base text. The translation philosophy and style is based on the NIV principles, and the translators occasionally looked at the NIV when a literal translation of Hebrew or Greek would be difficult for Serbian-speaking readers to understand.

In trying to get a Bible, Pedja had been doing some research online and watched a YouTube video of the CEO of Ikonos, one of our partners and a publisher of Christian literature in Serbia, who was talking about Biblica and a new translation of the Bible in modern Serbian.

New Serbian Translation Bible

Explaining why he was so pleased to hear about this translation Pedja said “I only had a Serbian Bible which was translated from the King James into Serbian 150 years ago, and it was really hard to read. Some of the passages are close to impossible to understand as the Serbian language has changed so much in recent years. At times I would have to work so hard to read it that I would forget what I had just read in the previous section!”.

Pedja was desperate to get his own copy of the New Serbian Translation, but from what he could find out, all copies in his local area had been distributed. He was disappointed, but then came a gift from a surprising source. Pedja said “I received the Bible as a gift from a Serbian Orthodox Priest! The Priest is a friend of the CEO of Ikonos and he had some Bibles to distribute for free. My happiness was simply unmeasurable!”.

Pedja was baptized as an infant – he says 99% of babies in Serbia are baptized – and he has grown up with his faith. Due to his job it is difficult for him to attend worship every Sunday, but he attends when he can.

With regards to his new NST Bible, Pedja wants to learn as much as he can, so that God’s word will guide his life as he understands it more. He also wants to pass his knowledge on to others so that they will know it is not just enough to say “I am a Christian” as many do in Serbia, but he wants people to really understand the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the impact this should have on their lives.

When talking to Pedja, it was obvious that he loves his God, but also his country. He speaks of the bloody history of the country, and how he sees that God has protected it over the years. He also shared how the Serbs are passionately protesting to protect the church from state ownership.

It was an education to talk to Pedja, but it was also such an encouragement to talk to someone who loves God’s Word and wants to share it with others. We will be praying for you Pedja!

Pedja holding his Pedja reading the New Serbian Translation Bible

Revival Ministry Denmark

Posted on January 13, 2021 by Biblica Europe

As a young boy Jan Joensen started drinking alcohol. As a teenager, addiction to drugs almost cost him his life, several times. In 1995 his life was miraculously transformed as he became a Christian and was set free from addiction. Since then he has been serving the Lord. Jan is married and has two children. In 2010, he and his wife started Revival Ministry. Initially working in India planting a church and setting up a ministry to orphans, the focus changed in 2014.

Following an encounter with a refugee mother and daughter, who Jan had the privilege of leading to the Lord, and seeing a real transformation in their lives, Jan said ”the Lord changed my heart” and the ministry changed to be a a church movement working mainly with refugees.

Revival Ministry found it difficult to get the whole Bible in the languages of the people they were ministering to. At a conference Jan met a representative from Biblica. A relationship developed as Jan became aware of the work of Biblica, and in 2019 a plan started to take shape and recently Revival Ministry obtained 2,800 Arabic Bibles and 5,800 Farsi Bibles.

In France the Revival Ministry refugee church is based in several cities. From these cities the Arabic and Farsi Bibles are shared around France, and other parts of Europe.

Jan said “So far about 600 Arabic and 700 Farsi Bibles have been distributed, and we will have two-thirds given out within 3 months, with the rest given out within 6-7 months. The process may seem long, but as well as issues of distance, we have additional issues of getting the Bibles into particular ghettos. We are thankful that in France the team is recognised by the French government and therefore allowed to travel all over France to the groups. In other countries we have more issues.”

As part of the distribution, each leader gets their own Bible and a few to use for teaching and for leaders of discipleship groups. Jan shared “When the leaders received the whole Bible it was like children who received a great gift. The joy and happiness can’t be described by words. Already there are hundreds of refugees in Bible study groups made possible because Biblica had mercy for the refugee church. Because of how God is using our partnership with Biblica, we can see growth in the number of refugees coming to God.”

At Biblica we give thanks to God for the work among those who are suffering through persecution and in fear of deportation. We are humbled as we hear of people coming to faith as they live in these circumstances and how they then share the gospel with others.

If you would like to support Biblica’s work, please visit our Giving Page.

Arabic and Farsi Bibles to Sarajevo

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Biblica Europe

Following a career in IT, Michael Strand responded to a call from God and since 2019 has been working with the Christian & Missionary Alliance (CMA) in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Michael’s role with the CMA in Sarajevo is to support the evangelical church that exists there by providing mentoring, leadership training and helping with church planting. Another essential dimension of the work of the church is with migrants arriving from the Middle East and North Africa.

In the Spring of 2020 a young man, from the Middle East, who Michael describes as a “natural evangelist” visited the church in Sarajevo. He didn’t have Bibles in the languages that he needed, and so to support his work Michael engaged with Biblica to get a number of copies of Farsi and Arabic Bibles. These Bibles have now been distributed, and recently Michael ordered some more for the young man as he continues to work in a migrant camp.

Farsi Bibles

Recognising the difficulties of getting into some countries, Michael is acutely aware of the opportunity that has arisen for the church in Sarajevo as the Lord brings to their doorstep people with physical and spiritual needs, to whom they can share the love of God and provide the hope of the gospel.

To find out more about Biblica’s translation work, visit Translation & Access – Biblica Europe – Transforming lives through God’s Word

Did you know…..

Arabic is spoken by over 200 million people in 28 countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Arabic script reads from right to left with an alphabet containing 28 consonants.

English words of Arabic origin include “algebra”, “cotton”, “magazine”, “tariff” and “zero”

Farsi is spoken today primarily in Iran and Afghanistan with over 30 million Farsi speakers

English words of Farsi origin include “bazaar”, “checkmate”, “pyjama”, “kiosk” and “caravan”.

To find out more about Biblica’s translation work, click here.

A first in Ukrainian!

Posted on November 12, 2020 by Biblica Europe

Ukraine is a country that has a history of invasion, occupation, repression and revolution, and as one of the largest countries in Europe, with a population of 44 million, it does not have a contemporary translation of the Bible in the heart language of the people. Under the oppression of the Soviet Regime, Russian became the common language in Ukraine. In 1996 Ukrainian was once again confirmed as the official language in the country’s constitution.

In 2018 Biblica began the translation process for the contemporary Ukrainian translation.

Andrey & Tanya Shpygunov are the Directors of ServeNow in Ukraine. They can trace their journey to this point back to the 1990s when, after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, many missionaries came to Ukraine. It was during this time that they both made a decision to follow God and dedicated their lives to serve him.

Andrey and Tanya in Traditional Clothes

Previously, and for 10 years, they served in Crimea working in another ministry to children. Reflecting on this time Tanya said

“Everything seemed so stable, and we thought that it would be this way forever. No one could imagine that things might change. Yet, that is what happened in 2014. Russia occupied Crimea, and we had to leave the Hope Centre behind”.

It was a difficult time for Andrey and Tanya, but they can now see how God was working out his purposes for their family in what appeared to be a hopeless situation, leading them to ServeNow, and to becoming the Directors in Ukraine in 2014.

Partnering with Biblica, Andrey and Tanya obtained 1200 Survivors booklets – the first Biblica resource in Ukrainian for ServeNow! In Summer 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they were able to run two camps which were attended by 173 children. Each of these children got their own copy of the Survivors Booklet.

Kid with Survivor Booklet

Tanya said

“During our Bible study classes, we read this booklet and discussed it together. Most of the kids were not Christians, and so the accessible text with simple illustrations helped us to have meaningful conversations, as we talked about their fears and as we prayed together”.

What a great encouragement this is!

The contemporary Ukrainian translation is an opportunity to influence a nation. An opportunity to introduce people to the love of God. At Biblica we are excited to be working on this translation.

It costs just £1 to translate the next word – can you help?

www.biblicaeurope.com/givetotranslate/

You can download the Survivors booklet in Ukrainian here.

Tag: Translation