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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a missionary Bible translator? I have always been fascinated with missionary organizations like Wycliffe and New Tribes Mission that focus on translating the Bible into the languages of unreached people groups. Missionaries go and live with the people, learn their language, put the language into writing, translate the Scriptures, and then teach the people how to read the Bible in their own language. It is an awesome task.
Wycliffe U.K has put together a set of interactive puzzles where you can actually try your skills at translating a foreign language.
A foreign language is just like a code that needs to be broken especially where you have no textbooks, trained teachers or linguaphone courses…
A new language may seem daunting but try and solve the puzzles - you’ll be surprised at what you can do!
Apart from aptitude, there are two qualities that are needed to learn another language: adequate time to learn, and the motivation. Obviously those can’t be tested here!
These puzzles though will give you a good idea of your aptitude. Even you don’t do particularly well at this, if the other two factors are in your favour then you’ll still be able to make some headway.
Looks like fun! If you do give this a try, come back to the comments here and let us know how you made out.
Yeah! That was fun!
I got 100%! Of course my language skills are amazing because of my wonderful Spanish teacher!
That’s interesting, thanks for posting it!
OK Ray, that was way too much fun!
Good job, Rachael. I didn’t get 100%, but only got one wrong. I missed the relationship between the ke, ka, ko endings. Rats.
In college, my goal was to be a Wycliffe Bible Translator. I majored in French and History, with a concentration in Spanish. I also took Anthropology courses.
Although I never ended up with Wycliffe (my husband says I would never have been able to stand the bugs and snakes!, I do teach French and Spanish and love language.
Once my kids are grown, maybe I can convince my husband we need to go live with an unreached people group that has a low level of bugs and snakes…..
Thanks Bethany! Good job too!
I always thought it would be neat to translate bibles.Or smuggle bibles into somewhere like China. There’s such a need for both!
I agree though, the bugs always discourage me a bit!
Rachael,
Señora Fowler thanks you for your kind words.