James Poole: Is the End of Bible Translation in Sight? #20
Can one in five people worldwide really be reached with God's word in their lifetime, and what does it take to make that happen? JD explores this with James Poole, Executive Director of Wycliffe Bible Translators UK & Ireland, whose unlikely journey from computer programmer to Church of England vicar brought him to one of the most significant roles in global Bible translation. James unpacks the race to reach 130 million people with zero scripture, the shift from Western-led translation to locally-owned movements, and why the most urgent thing the global church can offer is simply the willingness to listen.
Articles, Scripture, organisations, and other media discussed in this episode
Wycliffe Bible Translators UK & Ireland- The Bible translation organisation James has led for 11 years, working to build local capacity for translation programs worldwide.
Project 2033 - A global initiative across multiple organisations aiming to provide at least some scripture in every remaining language by 2033, targeting 99.96% of the world's population with a New Testament.
The Jesus Film - A far-reaching evangelism tool.
Faith and Farming - A Nigerian-originated ministry contextualising the gospel for subsistence farmers, tracing farming imagery through the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.
Faith Comes By Hearing- An audio Bible organisation.
Mentioned Scripture
Matthew 28:19-20 - The Great Commission, a driving theological motivation behind Bible translation and world mission.
Revelation 7:9 - Every tribe, language, people and nation, which is the historic vision that Project 2033 is on the verge of fulfilling for the first time since Pentecost.
Genesis 3 - The cursing of farming labour, noted as one of the few places subsistence farmers hear their daily work mentioned in scripture.
Episode Highlights:
Why Translation Matters
"If people are to know Jesus, if churches are to grow biblically faithful, if those churches are to have the resources that they need to train their own church leaders... then that's what we're concerned about."
Not A Technical Problem
"The challenge is not that people don't have the Bible in their language. The challenge is that not having the Bible in your language affects your ability to know Jesus."
A Historic Moment
"For the first time since the day of Pentecost, to think that people of every tribe, language, people and nation will have access to God's Word for themselves... that is a historic event."
Whose Bible Is it?
“The Bible does not belong to us in the West as our inheritance that we choose to take elsewhere."
God Speaks Your Language
"People say he's no longer foreign. He's one of us. The Emmanuel God with us has now come true."
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JD (00:01.282)
Hello, James! Thanks so much for coming on.
James Poole (00:04.157)
JD, hi, it's good to be with you.
JD (00:07.326)
How are things looking over in Oxford? Another gloomy day. always a little bit, I'm a little bit antsy when I compare the beautiful sunny weather in DC to my Western European friends, but how are things looking?
James Poole (00:19.965)
Well, actually, it's beautiful sunny here. Oxford in August is full of tourists from all over the world. It's very crowded and it's a joy to welcome everyone.
JD (00:29.004)
Well, that is a familiar sight here in DC. well, I'd love to jump in and why don't you first share a little bit more about yourself, what it is you do and how it is you aim to impact the world.
James Poole (00:41.607)
Yes, so I'm James. I've been leading Wycliffe Bible Translators UK and Ireland for 11 years, previously church leader, before that training church leaders in East Africa. And I joined really with the realization that as a church leader, much of what you're doing is based on the Bible. So I spend a lot of my time preaching on Sundays or preparing sermons for Sundays.
I might be using the Bible midweek in small groups or helping train people around Bible study groups. I might be using the Bible in one-to-one pastoral work and pastoral ministry, even visiting someone who is ill. You always have a verse to share with someone. And so the whole of my ministry really was based on the Bible and connecting the Bible to people's lives, believing that God speaks through it when his word is shared and taught.
then it dawned on me really that if one in five people worldwide don't have the Bible in the language that speaks to them then there are churches, and my particular heart was actually for church leaders because I was one, where church leaders don't have the tools to do the job gods call them to where they're using foreign language, colonial language, bibles that they maybe don't really understand very well, that the congregations that they're serving don't understand well, and so my concern really was that
want to see church growth worldwide, which would seem to be a New Testament emphasis for the sort of thing we should want to see, then that's not going to happen without church leaders being equipped with Bibles, which is of course what has been done for us in the West for many years now. So the Bible Translation Movement very much is around making the Bible available to everybody, but you asked about me personally, my personal concern was to be available for church leaders and see church growth that way.
JD (02:34.424)
Wonderful. Let's dig into some of the details. So you're a vicar. Are you in the Church of England? Is that right?
James Poole (02:40.051)
Yeah, so I was in the Church of England, or still am. Church of England is a very mixed denomination. We would say we were part of the Bible believing, Jesus loving, evangelical, you want to use the jargon, part of the Church of England.
JD (02:56.628)
And you were, is it Vicar for internationals, associated Vicar for internationals for many years.
James Poole (03:01.917)
Well, was an associate vicar, yeah. So I was serving at a church in Cambridge. Cambridge has people from around the world drawn there because of the university and the research parks and so on. And I was working particularly in a large church with international postgraduate students and their families. So yeah, I did that working. So working cross-culturally, even within the UK when I was there.
JD (03:25.364)
And how is it you got from working as a vicar in Cambridge with this international heart and focus to ending up at Wycliffe Bible Translators and directing the UK Ireland arm.
James Poole (03:39.449)
Well, I had a strong heart for World Mission. I've been overseas training church leaders, as I said. We're back in the UK working with people and just really wanting to stay in a World Mission sort of space on things going on in my life at the time and realised that mission organisations often needed people to lead them who were with church backgrounds. So when you think what a mission organisation like Wycliffe Bible Translators is for us in the UK and Ireland,
We think the real mission agency is the Church. When you read the New Testament, the Church is God's mission agency and mission organizations like ours really exist to serve the Church in their engagement in world mission. So the Church doesn't outsource world mission to us while we do it, we don't tell churches what to do, we're here to serve churches as they engage. so mission organizations do need or really benefit from people moving.
from church work intermission organisations and back and forth in order to make that connection. And one of my concerns, know, as I looked at the world of Bible translation is I don't have some of the technical skills that are needed in different ways, but I wanted to play a part and I wanted to be useful in this significant cause. And it turned out that leading the organisation was the thing that they wanted me to do. I ended up leading it.
JD (04:59.726)
So was that your first role at Wycliffe? Was going straight from being a vicar to being executive director?
James Poole (05:05.619)
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I was new in, I had a steep learning curve initially. But it really actually very helpful because what is the role of a CEO? Well, one of the things is to overall direction and strategy and to make sure that an organization is working on the most significant things, using its resources in the best way for long term effectiveness.
and being biblically faithful not just in the outcomes it seeks to achieve but in the way it goes about seeking those outcomes. And so some of my prior experience has been helpful with that.
JD (05:47.118)
That's fascinating. So we'll talk more about careers at the end of the podcast as we often do, but there's a lot there I want to dig into, but this is around the time.
James Poole (05:55.444)
I started off as a computer programmer, so I've just moved across in different ways. So yeah, let's talk about that later.
JD (06:01.454)
But just to bring a little bit of my story to this, I see a lot of my legacy in your past and the God's been working in your life. So my father is a computer programmer who worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators, US for 25 years and came to it from a very similar place as you. So grew up in a very Bible believing church and always looking for ways to encourage people with words of scripture.
in a very pastoral way. And I think that pastoral touch of drawing from the Psalms, drawing straight from scripture and re-quoting them as comfort, as challenge, as exhortation, I think that's an art in a ministry that's maybe a little bit lost in a lot of churches today. So I see so much resonance there. And I'm really encouraged to talk more about Wycliffe as I saw it when I was younger. We traveled the country raising support because
We didn't have an official salary for 25 years. We just raised from friends and family. But also some of the messier sides, too, maybe the more bureaucratic sides. And we'll get into effectiveness here. But first, let's talk about the problem area. So we always talk about with our guests, what's a problem that you were looking to tackle with your career? And what are some of the best ways to tackle it? So here, clearly, people not having a Bible in their heart language is a massive problem.
Trace that back. How big is the problem? it? Yeah, how many people are affected? How severely does it affect them?
James Poole (07:34.461)
Yeah, so...
Yeah, so one in five people worldwide don't have the Bible in their language. That's around 1.5 billion people. Around half of those now have the New Testament in their language. We're about 91 % with the New Testament and those numbers are going down every time. I would actually phrase the challenge a little bit differently to what you said then. So the challenge is not that people don't have the Bible in their language.
And the challenge is that not having the Bible in your language affects your ability to know Jesus. So what we're actually focused on is people knowing Jesus. That's what we're about. So it's not a technical or linguistic problem. It's that when you look at the jigsaw puzzle of World Mission and you try to put all the pieces together and all the components that are needed for World Mission to flourish.
that if people are to know Jesus, if churches are to grow biblically faithful, if those churches are to have the resources that they need to train their own church leaders, to plant churches, to stay consistent to the gospel over generations, not simply in one generation but across generations, then that's what we're concerned about. And so then our piece of that jigsaw is to put the Bible translation to work in place.
There are other organisations that do this, we're not the only organisation that does this. The more the merrier, we're delighted when more organisations want to do it. Though frequently other organisations have said, well, you focus on that bit and we'll focus on the church leader training or the different components that go there. So the challenge we're involved in is not a sort of developmental concern, it does have developmental impacts, but it really is very much a Great Commission type of concern.
James Poole (09:36.319)
We get other organisations saying to us that we can't do our work effectively until you've done yours, so please get on with it. that drives us forwards.
JD (09:45.144)
So here's an analogy that maybe helps me think about it. And maybe you can challenge the analogy or tell me how this doesn't or does hold up. I think often of wash, so water and sanitation and hygiene in the developmental space. We don't care that there exists purely hypothetical or theoretical pipes with water somewhere if nobody drinks from the water. What we care about is that people have living life, that they have life in the fullest. We know that.
with Jesus's eternal life. And that's ultimately the outcome that we care about is people knowing God, loving God and neighbor. And Bible translation is a means through supporting that life transformation. But we're not just trying to create academic translations that sit in a library somewhere, as some kind of.
James Poole (10:35.589)
Absolutely. So when you get into the challenges of a Bible translation, people always ask about the challenges of work where the language has never been written down before and all these sorts of technical issues. And they're usually thinking about getting up to the point at which you have produced a translation. And then imagine that a translation has been produced, the task has been finished, whereas actually, we're very much more about Bible being used in ways which change lives.
people being helped to use the Bible in those ways. So the translation task is just one part of the challenge that's in front of us and depending on the context sometimes some contexts are predominantly Christian and are immediately receptive and welcoming and so that part of the work is relatively easy. Some parts are quite hostile to, yeah, and persecuting of Christians.
And so that part of the work is actually, in some ways, the greater challenge than the translation task.
JD (11:39.692)
Yeah. And can we, can we unpack the, the, maybe the roadblocks right now and like maybe unpack currently as it stands by the numbers, how many people don't have the new Testament in their language. mentioned that 1.5 billion don't have roughly about that. Don't have the Bible completed in a language that they know well. although these, definitions are thorny, there's a lot of caveats, so please, please reframe it as, most as most accurate, but,
It does also seem at the same time, and I've heard this challenge raised by others in the mission space, that the vast overwhelming majority of people in the world have the Bible, the New Testament in a language that they can read, that they understand well by reading. so I've heard that that figure put it something like 96%, 97%. So how would you put the problem in the numbers in the most salient way?
James Poole (12:39.249)
Yeah, numbers, when you dig into exact numbers, it does get hard because it's actually very difficult to measure exact population sizes when you're getting, we're familiar with how many people live in a country. And we forget those numbers are often estimates, for a country like India, they say, well, 1.1 billion, but the rounding on those numbers could be larger than whole countries like my own, which is, it is slightly hard to measure.
when you then start getting into much smaller people groups, data is very much estimated. But the total number of people with the Bible is sort of 80 % of the world's population, so that's probably around 6.2 million people, just something maybe slightly more than that. And then you've got another maybe a million, maybe 900,000 with a New Testament. And then
the remainder, many of you have parts, because the pace of work in progress may have a gospel available or something, but really very little. The numbers who have thought to have... 900 million, yeah, 900,000, 900 million.
JD (13:46.734)
Sorry, you mean 900 million or 900,000? Yeah, think you had a thousand down on those recent numbers.
James Poole (13:55.571)
Yeah, yeah, the numbers are very big. yeah, so close on a billion with that. And the numbers with zero script, like not even a single verse, you're not even a John 316 type verse is really fairly quickly coming down now. It's around, you know, probably around 130 million, something like that.
and it's coming down month by month because of the work that's being started and progress that's being made.
JD (14:34.286)
Do you think that's where most of the opportunity is? Cause my, my intuition is like, that's where we should go. But I also understand there are reasons why those languages haven't been translated yet. They may be very difficult to reach. Maybe there's older translations that have been done by larger communities. They would be easier to update in the life giving way. So how do you think about the opportunity? Is it just clear that's where we should go? Or do you think it's a lot more complicated than that?
James Poole (14:59.731)
I would look at the question slightly differently, I think. So let me backtrack slightly. So we're currently about 80 % of the world's population with the Bible, 91 % with the New Testament. And we need to come back to the thing you mentioned about, more people able to understand in a second language, because that's actually quite important. But at the moment, there's a push from quite a lot of organizations, especially in the US, to really accelerate the pace of
people getting a first translation, at least getting something in their language. And that is on track for, the target is 2033. I don't know if that target will be hit exactly, but a huge progress is being made to try to get those numbers up to 95 % with the Bible and 99.96 % with New Testament and indeed 100 % with something and
top world's top 100 languages to have a second translation as well. there's a choice in the top 100 languages. so we're in this era now, I that's just eight years out. So we're in this era now where the translation task is starting to shift. So if you ask me right now, what is the need? Well, pushing in that direction, there's a translation that needs that's get everyone a first translation.
of at least a New Testament or something, that's a strong immediate need. But people who are thinking of the longer horizons, where could they serve with a 40 year career? We actually start looking beyond that and coming out the other side and saying, what is the longer need? And really the question shifts from, is there a first translation available to people that they can access to? Are the translations
adequate for their needs. And we know in English how language shifts and changes and capacity needs to be built around some of those things.
JD (17:01.26)
Yeah, of course.
JD (17:06.072)
I mean, if we settled down with the Tyndale translation of the 1500s, None of us would be reading our Bible plans, right? I think, I mean, just look, it's a fascinating case, right? The English language of how many translations we need just to offer the full breadth. And maybe we have more than we need, right? But.
James Poole (17:12.401)
Yeah, yeah.
James Poole (17:26.995)
Yes, I mean, I suspect we haven't far more than we need. But if you look at the NIV as a sort of popular, well-known sort of example, New Testament published in 1979. The full Bible was then published in 1984, in which the New Testament was revised on the basis of feedback. And then it was revised again in 2011. And the Translation Committee still meet annually to consider further changes with a view that one day as language shifts or changes, they can do an update if needed.
the ESV went through, was it four, five visions before they said, okay, that's it, we're just gonna leave it now. So our own English language Bibles have that despite English being a fairly stable language. But we feel for ourselves that we just want high quality, accurate, faithful translations that communicate well. We feel we want...
simpler versions for use in children's groups and youth groups. want some more versions for close study. We feel for ourselves and our own churches that we want a range of translations to be available. And we want them in English in sufficient number that there's no central authority telling you this is the only translation you can use. Churches can vote with their feet and say, this is our preferred translation.
and we're not going to see that in all the world's languages, there's too many of them, but there is certainly a need for study Bibles and children's Bibles and range of Bibles in some of the world's major languages or at least regional languages, people's second languages, so that they can access more widely than in their own language only.
JD (19:13.528)
Sure. So to summarize this a bit, so it sounds like there's this immediate opportunity, which is for these remaining 130 million people who don't have any of the Bible in their language to get something in their language. And project 2033 is making great progress towards that. And then there's this longer horizon opportunity, which is to support the renewal of these translations.
for for probably I mean there's I guess there's there's no there's no end to this I think that's one thing that's so fascinating about Bible translation is you'll never have a you'll never have a perfectly I don't know if the word can contextualize this as a contested term but you'll never have a perfectly updated translation but but this is sort of an endless process
James Poole (20:00.861)
Yeah, the task of Bible translation will end. Yeah, it will only end when the Lord returns. That's how it is. It's the ongoing part of the church and we don't think about it in English because we're so used to having had high quality translations for hundreds of years and a thriving sort of Christian publishing market where people produce these things and more and of them. And so we just sort of take that for granted so easily.
JD (20:28.694)
Right, right, so, but can we go?
James Poole (20:30.227)
So I wouldn't see the task right now as being the of the 130 million or so without anything. I would see it more as the 900 million at least without a New Testament, the 1.5 billion. But when you think about world history and where we are in world history, we are on the verge of, know, the 2033 is dependent on what the Lord will do through the Lord's people. So we're not sort of promising anything in that.
JD (20:40.226)
without any testament. Yeah.
James Poole (20:57.907)
and different organizations are working at different paces and timescales, but if you look sort of globally as a lot of organizations are pushing on that particular goal, it is momentous, I mean for the first time since the day of Pentecost, to think that people of every tribe, language, people and nation will have access to God's Word for themselves, so can read and understand for themselves, they can read it to their children for themselves and so on.
That is a historic event and I think that is an exciting thing to be part of and to think that you've been part of under God helping to make that happen. That's a remarkable thing.
JD (21:31.47)
it is.
JD (21:37.496)
Some would say that that's when the end will come, right?
James Poole (21:40.763)
Yeah, well, especially on your side of the Atlantic, JD. So we have different eschatologies over in Europe. And then there are a lot of other mission sort of activities that people are thinking around 2033. That's not particularly where this goal came from. That just works out that way. It seems to me more the case that saying the end will come because the Bible is being translated is a mistake about the Gospel being preached to all nations. The Gospel can be preached to all nations ahead of Bible translation.
So we need to sort of disentangle those somewhat. But also it's viewing translations as when they're done, they're done, which simply isn't the case. That translations are much more, as we've been talking about, living documents that the churches need to keep on updating, revising, as we do for ourselves.
JD (22:34.606)
So I'd like to transition to talk more about that 900 million that don't have any of the New Testament in their language. And could you break that up for me in terms of like where these 900 million are? it mostly 1040 window? I would, I would guess. And what are currently the roadblocks to, to catalyzing translation efforts. an earlier conversation with you was very helpful to me. And this was discussing the ways in which Wycliffe supports and it's not.
necessarily setting it a translator or even at all anymore. I'm not sure you'll have to update me on the details, but a lot of it is more just supporting indigenous efforts for translations, especially in places that are harder to reach that have strong linguistical barriers where an outsider just would have no, have, would have a lot of trouble getting started. But yeah, let's break that down with the 900 million and like, how do you, how do you see the lay of the land geographically, but also in terms of some of the barriers.
James Poole (23:33.361)
Yeah, and it's not just that the 900 million have nothing because there's work in progress. So it's around half of them. Something is available in there in the language now, whether they access or not is another question. Geographically, Asia is predominant. you just because of the population density in those countries.
So particularly your sort of 1040 window classically has high population and it's a harder place for mission work to happen. It's not the place that the Bible translators were going first and that's just the reality. Asia is also the place where you can have a language spoken by a hundred million people. The one translation can potentially be made available to a lot of people in one go. Distribution.
over that sort of size. Those people might be not at all open to reading the Bible, their government might be opposing distribution, and so there can be some real challenges with that.
James Poole (24:46.387)
And can we go to the next part of your question? Come on, remind me of your question.
JD (24:46.434)
So all throughout Asia, the 1040 window. Yeah. Yeah. so is this, help me get a better sense. Is this like a thousand people groups each averaging roughly 900,000 people? that add up to the 900 million? Is it like, you know, you have a few that are like a few tens of millions and then the vast majority are a few tens of thousands of people. cause that would be, that would entail two different,
different approaches I would imagine. And I imagine these remaining languages are kind of all throughout the 1040 window. It's not like there's a big pocket in Southeast Asia. Although maybe you have all those, is it Micronesia states, all those small Polynesian countries, and a lot of linguistical diversity, especially in Papua New Guinea, right? You have one country with something like over thousand languages, or close to it, at least, right?
James Poole (25:39.923)
Yeah, yeah. So, so you asked me where the people are. So the people are in Asia, if you ask me where the languages are, that's a different sort of a question. Perhaps New Guinea, as you say, is has the most languages of any country in the world. But each of those languages spoken by relatively small number of people. Now, each of those people is loved by the Lord. And if you think we're commanded by the Lord to reach the less, the lost and the least, then we need to not overlook them.
But the type of work that can happen in those different contexts really is very different. So in terms of numbers of language communities, there's probably around 7,400 languages spoken in the world today, which would include around 400 of those would be sign languages. probably we would estimate that around 1,200 of those languages are what we'd say was sort of low vitality.
they're dying out languages or they're really very small and translation activities are unlikely to happen. But there is work in progress in currently in around 4,400 languages. So you've got work in progress and currently in more than half the world's languages, which is why we think that when you roll forward sort of eight years, 10 years,
the portions of people with Bible in the language and the numbers of languages is going to go up dramatically. So currently, know numbers get hard to follow, but there's completed Bibles in 776 languages at the moment right now, which is just over 10 % of the world's languages, but those are the most populous languages on the whole. And the New Testament's currently in a further 1800s.
languages additional to that. that gives some sort of size of it. When you're talking about the small languages, which is not really where we particularly focus, but people often think very much that translation is orientated around the smallest languages. You can see very quickly that the idea of each language being dependent on a team of Westerners going to do the work for them.
JD (27:40.334)
Sure.
James Poole (28:05.555)
is just not going to work. It's a broken model, it's not going to scale. You can get so far but it's not going to be sufficient to not only translate for those people but to maintain revisions and so on. But also methodologically you have to ask the question whose Bible is it anyway? The Bible does not belong to us in the West as our inheritance that we choose to take elsewhere. There are churches in
Papua New Guinea is a predominantly Christian country, there are churches there. And so the task really is to help the churches to do their own translations. And when you look at it that way, how can we train Papua New Guineans to help Papua New Guinean churches do translations? Suddenly you can have an approach which scales very much more. And Papua New Guineans, of course, will care about their own country. And so...
if they see translation as a significant thing for their own church growth and things that they want for the goals that they have for themselves, then they'll take off and it will grow, which is what is happening. And the reason so much is happening nowadays is the sort of historic shift from a Western led approach to a local organization, local church led approach, which is a much more of a multiplying sort of method and which is what is essential
for the long term building that capacity that churches can produce their own translations, revise their own translations and just make sure their own translation needs are being met.
JD (29:46.306)
So we're naturally going in this direction of how to solve this problem. And I still have some unanswered questions about where exactly the people are who need the translation. And I have this picture of Asia, but I still don't know really where throughout Asia and where maybe the fields are most ready for harvest, use of a biblical analogy. But if we're talking about how the magic happens and how the translation work is done, I think
I suppose now is a good time to transition to that. coming alongside catalyzing a lot of the initiative from Indigenous peoples to develop a first translation or to improve, I suppose, in many cases, an existing started work of Bible translation. So how would you summarize in a nutshell the work that Wycliffe is doing on that front?
James Poole (30:41.427)
Sorry, could you just repeat the question?
JD (30:44.108)
So.
So we have this massive challenge, right? We have 900 million people living in the world without a completed New Testament. We have an opportunity, is indigenous peoples all around the world want support for even developing their own Bible translations. And we have modern technology, AI tools, incredible.
international communications and more financial resources than ever in the West to help support and catalyze these efforts. So where does that lead to for you and what's some of the work that Wycliffe UK is doing to be a part of this?
James Poole (31:35.377)
Yeah, so it seems to me that you need at least two different translation approaches and the one approach, people always have their favorite approach and they say that's the one that they advocate for, but there's probably two different approaches at least that are needed. And I say that not because I've sort of sat around reading books about it, but you travel around the world and ask people what are their needs for their churches and their hopes for their people and so on.
And when people answer this, you get these sort of two slightly conflicting responses. One is of the urgent need for immediate translation. And people sort of need it yesterday and they need it now. People want to see translations done before, know, for their children and they can see the impact that it will have and they are hungry for it. And so in those contexts,
a more lightweight, sort of rapid translation methodology often works really well. So helping people to do their own translations. And those first attempts at translation may not actually be very good initial translations, because people are still learning how to do the translations, but they get something done. And if it's useful in their churches, it builds momentum and they can go back and revise it and revise it and revise it again.
The translations we have, well, I mentioned the NIV, was New Testament was launched in 79. we sort of, it wasn't right, 84, they made changes. And the King James, which everyone thinks was the classic translation, of course, was as you alluded earlier, it was based on Tyndale's translation, Coverdale's translation, and the revision process is essential. So you can have a more lightweight, fast moving translation methodology.
which doesn't aim to produce the gold standard, a perfect translation which doesn't really exist but first time around, but which is building capacity and interest in that and which is driven really more by the immediate ministry needs of the churches than it is by the desire to publish a particular book at a certain date. digital
James Poole (33:56.157)
tools distribution on apps and things makes it much easier because you can keep updating and translation revising it while it's working progress. And AI obviously can help with that. But there's another track which is also needed, which sometimes this depends on context and on language size, that there is still a need for really
well-researched thought through translations which produce a high standard sort of out of the gate and that requires a slower moving with more outside consulting, resourcing, mentoring, training, a more intensive effort over a longer period of time. One of the accusations made against Christians by Muslims for example is that they keep changing the Bible. The Bible that we have read is not the original.
If you keep launching a translation that's not very good, but that's fine because you're going to update it and revise it and change it around and it's going to go through four editions in the first six years. That's probably counterproductive in Islamic context. So you need to do something that's really thought through and reliable straight away. So depending on the context, you have those two tracks and both of them actually be behind the scenes if you want to think about how to work most effectively in this space.
In both of them, the translation is not really the thing to look at. What you need to look at is the capacity that's being built around how to do translations. Are people learning and growing in their understanding of the Bible and ability to do exegesis, to text? Are Greek and Hebrew skills being developed? Are skills around using the Bible, which is the critical thing, getting into churches, using evangelism, maybe on digital evangelism and so on?
are those skills being built such that when the support from other countries drops back, the task just continues and continues and doesn't immediately sort of fall away and stop. So when we would look at it, we would be trying to say, are the appropriate sort of translation methods being used? And always, we're always trying to ask the question,
James Poole (36:17.107)
is capacity being built appropriately for who it is. Now you mentioned AI, AI of course has tremendous possibility to accelerate the work. And in the right, used in the right way as we are, it's been rolled out significantly, used in the right way, it can really accelerate drafting. It produces drafts that aren't very good, but that's okay because if you can get rid of a lot of the of the grunt work of
that initial drafting, can focus the team can focus on polishing and improving. So that's a really great way to accelerate the work. It also though, can limit the team's ability to learn, you can get lazy through using the AI, rather than doing the hard work yourself. And so there's a risk that it can set a ceiling on on the capacity that's built. So it's not a
a sort of silver bullet tool. It needs using carefully for the like things.
JD (37:19.148)
Right. And it's not trained on these languages that many of which are still developing their own. I don't know how many of those are left, languages that are developing their own grammatical structures and written patterns. suppose a lot of those languages are maybe the less vital ones that maybe won't persist into the future. A lot of Wycliffe's historic efforts seem to be including efforts that helps.
develop written languages that were prior to only spoken. But if you're trying to work with AI tools or LLMs for languages that don't have written text, missing a lot of training data, although it might help with grammatical structures and other forms of things, I imagine.
James Poole (38:00.849)
Yeah, so that's the normal space we're working in is that that language haven't been written down before. And so there is no help from the commercially available or the open source LLMs. So the way it has to work for us is that working from as translation gets going, maybe once you've done the New Testament, it can help with the Old Testament or parts of things, it can keep on redrafting all the time.
And so the more you've translated, the better the AI becomes. That's the more likelihood. And also, AI can be used in a whole range of things. Checking translations, trying to find mistakes or inconsistencies. We've always used software for this. And we have tools that do this. But AI can lift those to another level. So it can accelerate quality checks as well. And in some ways, some of that is actually the more useful at trying to.
ensure consistency and quality and so on. The AIs, we can feed them not just the translation that's been worked on and the Greek and the Hebrew, but other translations that have been done in similar languages in the region. And it's just very good at processing that.
JD (39:14.68)
So my historic vision of Bible translation is something like you have a Western missionary who drops off into some foreign country, some foreign village, and does some survey work and finds a tribe that they want to work with and then commit a 20-year career as a translator with the support of Wycliffe and other internationals.
to begin a translation. And of course, doing this with as much tact and sensitivity as possible, becoming a member of the community, right? I understand this is a fairly outdated version of Bible translation. So what you described seems like two different models, one model being more from grassroots. You have believers who
want to carry out their own translation and just maybe need some tools from organizations like Wycliffe. The other being a more high touch support where it's not just a few tools, but it's more like consulting or more specialized support for more technical issues in the translations, but very different than the kind of Western or parachutes in model.
James Poole (40:36.561)
Yeah, so that old model is really quite outdated now. Though the Bible translation sort of space is quite diverse, there are some organizations that would still advocate for that. yeah, who would say that's appropriate for some communities and perhaps the rightness not really what we do.
The modern Bible translation movement really got going with Westerners going to place and learning the language and doing a translation, which was how you write through church missions history. When you hear the stories of all the old great missionaries, often they were missionaries by day and Bible translators by night. That's how things were going. It didn't produce the best quality translations on the whole, not least because the
people doing the translation that the missionaries weren't fluent in the language. And if the translation wasn't very good, the people often too polite to tell them so. Much better to have people translating into their own mother tongues. So it switched to that some long time ago with the mission workers being there to support and train and mentor and help in various ways. But even that model
It doesn't scale and there's a danger that when you have a Western worker that all the time that they can take over too much. So I need to be hesitant because context vary dramatically and in some contexts it is still a necessary approach for people to sacrifice significant parts of their lives for the sake of one people group. I know people have done that and I just think it's remarkable. I praise God.
them. It's a good thing they're doing, I want to encourage them in it. But with rising standards of education worldwide, it's getting easier and easier in different contexts to find people who are able to step up and do this work themselves. The increasing local ownership of churches and churches wanting to their own identity and having their own goals is increasingly able to hand over to local organisations.
James Poole (42:50.483)
some of which were involved in founding historically, or some which new churches denominations that are forming. And so the impact is just much better if not only the translators are the people themselves, which has been the case for a long time, but the whole program is being run by the people themselves. And that gives them the flexibility to run it in culturally appropriate ways that they want to run things.
JD (43:12.76)
So where does that leave organizations like Wycliffe UK? You have a staff of 70. You're experts in various forms of this translation process. How does your organization break down in terms of, or how is it structured in terms of what people are working on and what services they're offering to help assist these translation efforts?
James Poole (43:37.107)
Yeah, so our team is 350 and our focus is to serve partner organizations in each country. And if there are no partner organizations help in establishing those organizations. So if we can, in each context where there's activity going, if we can focus on building the local organizational capacity for translations, then
you build that capacity the translations accelerate. So we're trying to focus on getting translations done, we're trying to actually really focus on people named Jesus, but if you go back as what's the strategic method is to help build capacity. It's rather like if you want to see church growth and you're concerned that the churches should be biblically faithful, there's different ways of doing that and one way might be to go around church by church trying to help each church and that would be a good way of
doing it. But another way would be to pull your energies into Bible colleges and say if we can establish strong Bible colleges in each context, then a generation later we'll see a stronger churches in each context. And so that's closer to where we are, we're really trying to focus on helping in context people to have stronger organizations. And we should help them strengthen organizations by helping them run translation programs more effectively, and your high quality sustainable translations.
by them develop their own organizations and by providing globally the tools and the resourcing that they can draw on. So you mentioned AI, that's not going to emerge from each context, it's going to have to be provided at a global level, but then to be made available down to each group. So our focus as an organization in that sense is on training and building that capacity, is, and not just us, but many other organizations in the Wycliffe world said they'd be working this way.
And that's what creates tremendous growth.
JD (45:37.454)
So does most of that staff energy go into creating scalable tools, like for instance, AI tools that support with technical parts of the translation? Does more of it go with providing bespoke support for technical issues or more for networking and pairing similar organizations and efforts together?
What's in that whole cloud of support services that Wycliffe offers?
James Poole (46:12.787)
Most of the manpower would go into supporting small numbers of people. So if you're mentoring people, you can only mentor so many people. So that could be right at the coalface of translation work where you're just trying to mentor a few small teams of translators and really investing in them, seeing that they will not do that translation, but they can be the next generation of leaders in their country.
It can be an organization development side of things, trying to help organizations develop their capacity to run and manage translation programs, helping organizations to engage churches with what's going on, or even back office type functions like finance and HR, which aren't very glamorous, but are critical for running things. so that is what it takes to build
capacity, giving people a sort of downloadable PDF of here's our scheme for how to train your team. It doesn't really work. Especially when you're talking in context worldwide where people frequently haven't had access to levels of education that we would take for granted. Many people have had primary schooling that's a very rote learning method and doesn't teach critical skills, critical thinking. They're intelligent people, but they simply haven't had the opportunities that we've had.
And so patiently working alongside people is actually really quite impactful.
JD (47:42.05)
So if.
JD (47:46.616)
So if I were to give an analogy from the business world, one that comes to mind, and correct me where this is wrong, is Wycliffe is offering a kind of strategy consulting for free for all of these indigenous Bible translation efforts. So you provide services from very low touch to very high touch, supporting these efforts with the end goal, of course, of people knowing Jesus through a translation effort.
It's a lot of, like, of, for instance, your 350 person staff, there's a a huge emphasis within that of people providing this kind of person to person support with the wealth of resources and knowledge that Wycliffe has.
James Poole (48:32.019)
Yeah, and if I make it sound vague, it's because we partner so extensively that we're at 350, but within our main partner networks, there's things over 6000 working and so you're filling a whole lot of different roles. But the strategy consulting is actually a reasonable analogy. If you consider that in some contexts, contexts where there are no known Christians, the work is going to look very differently to contexts where you're partnering with a church denomination or whatever who are running translation.
So in sum, that means someone actually going and really being very hands-on and doing the work. And it's the day of small things from a training point of view. But first of all, you have to build a team and then train the team. That might be a tenure task to get the translation done or a new testament done and then be working in a certain way. But in another place, it's a question of being available on Zoom to answer questions.
And that's all it is. Now, those questions might be hard questions. They might lead to, OK, we'll fly out and we'll do training programs for you, or even better, well, actually, we've been training some people in a neighboring country and we'll pay for you to go and visit them so that they can teach you some more cultural context and so on. But we try to think of it not so much in terms of what do we do, what can we can offer, as what is needed at the other end.
and work backwards. So what do the local partner organization, the translation organization need? Or what is this church is asking for? Okay, how do we pivot to let them lead? There's a danger in World Mission and that we think of the strategies from the West and then how can we implement the strategy globally? It's...
wrong way around. We have to travel globally and listen to what people are saying and listen what people are asking for and think okay how do we play our part in supporting them and what God has laid on their hearts to do.
JD (50:40.824)
So James, I'd love to close with 10 minutes of just rapid fire questions. So try to limit the answers to these like 30 seconds or so. Does that sound good?
James Poole (50:49.266)
Yeah, let's go for it.
JD (50:50.966)
Awesome. So are there a lot of jobs in Bible translation right now? Say you're a young professional, you're talented, ambitious Christian, you want to work in this space. Are a lot of organizations hiring? Where should somebody look?
James Poole (51:06.557)
Well, jobs may be the wrong word for it. Churches tend to want to support individuals to serve. And so that means those individuals usually raise their support from their churches and from their friends. But the number of roles is huge. We're in a space now and maybe a maturity where it's not simply take anyone who wants to offer. We're looking for people with high skills, people willing to serve.
across a whole range of domains, people with transferable skills, and I think there's really significant opportunities within that.
JD (51:44.184)
What are some of the up and coming projects and initiatives in the Bible translation space that you're excited about? Maybe non-Wycliffe organizations that you'd like to plug as great places for people who believe in the work of Bible translation, where they should consider working. Yeah, what are a few other organizations in the space you'd recommend? And I know this isn't an exhaustive list, but.
I mean, especially for young talent who might be interested in working or partnering with some organizations.
James Poole (52:16.817)
Now you're asking me a hard question now because in the US there are stacks of organisations doing all sorts of things. In the UK where I'm looking, most organisations leave Bible translation to us and they're doing other bits. I think, let me answer that question differently. So I think that what we want to see in the world is churches flourishing in every community, Bible believing, reaching out to their community, planting other churches under their own leadership.
And when you think what is it that they need to do that, they're going to need Bible colleges to train their own church leaders in some form. They're going to need Christian publishing houses so they can publish their own Bibles or devotional materials or whatever in some form. They're going to need the translation capacity to do their own things. They're going to their own mission organizations. And I think when we give our lives into helping build that capacity in every context,
some contexts much more advanced and developed than other contexts, it's still really early stages. But across that context, that all works together. And it all sort of it's like the flywheel that accelerates things, it really accelerates. So there's opportunities that people don't think of in the Christian publishing space and building publishing capacity in different contexts, letting churches publish their own commentaries and so on. In in in Bible colleges is relatively well known one in translation.
and so on. And when we enter that space of building that capacity and that ecosystem around churches, which we've been able to build in the West, then it really, you just see this time and time again, it really builds the next generation and things start to accelerate.
JD (54:00.088)
What are some other startups that you'd be really excited about on the missional front? I think about the Bible project. think about the chosen, some of these really scalable, I think in many cases, high fidelity projects that show what the life of Jesus was like and how it can transform your life. But do any come to mind for you and what are some?
initiatives that you would like to see more Christians starting boldly today.
James Poole (54:39.219)
So I'm going to again answer that slightly differently. So what we tend to see is new initiatives arising in the West, indeed especially in the US, having an idea and then talking how can we scale that globally? How can we run that out to everywhere? So classically the Jesus film was a tremendous thing in the past, still going strong and it rolls out everywhere and God has used it in incredible ways. And so that develops.
I think the era that we're now in, these things are changing. That when we produce resources in the West and try to roll them out globally, they come with a Western cultural baggage and they're experienced as a cultural imperialism and colonialism, if we're not careful. What's needed is to support local initiatives and to identify local initiatives.
James Poole (55:31.855)
All sorts of people want to see their books translated. They contact us all the time, have their books and their ministries translated into the world's languages. It's the wrong way round. We need to be asking what is going on in the places where the church is really growing, places like Nigeria will be an easy example of strong churches, and how can that be scaled across Africa or so on for different contexts. So when I look at it, I get more excited by the local initiatives that develop. We've got one which came out of Nigeria which
was around reaching people who were subsistence farmers. Now, I'm never hearing anybody in Europe has never asked me about how are going to reach subsistence farmers for Christ, but a large, very high portion of the world's church leaders are subsistence farmers, a large part of world's population yet to be reached are subsistence farmers. It's a critical way of looking at it, but those new ideas tend to originate from in context rather than from out of context.
JD (56:29.016)
What are some examples of contextualizations of scripture coming from, say, the global south or from more marginalized communities that aren't pushing the kinds of really popular Bible products like the Bible Project or the Chosen? Are there a couple that come to mind specifically that you think more people should know about?
James Poole (56:52.403)
Well, one subsistence farming, I think is really striking to me. It's called faith and farming. And it sounds like it's about farming, but it's not about farming, it's about faith. And what it's doing is it's saying, if you're a farmer, and essentially the only time you hear farming mentioned is in Genesis three, when farming is cursed. And once you're harvest to bring in your tithes and your offerings, you can feel like...
JD (56:57.196)
What's it called?
JD (57:00.76)
Okay.
James Poole (57:21.043)
God doesn't really care about the work that you're actually doing on a day-to-day basis. And what it does is starts in Genesis and it goes through the story of your creation, fall, redemption, new creation, and shows how farming itself and farming analogies are written into scripture and presents God's love for farmers. Now, that sounds in a sense a narrow, area, but it's huge.
and it asks different questions to the questions that we would ask because they come out of a particular cultural context that's there. And so you see this again and again, when people create their own resourcing, it just is more interesting than to them. They're serving their own needs. And the way to access that from the West is not to Google around looking for it.
but it's just to talk to Western organisations. People often ask me about the task of Bible translation, so they get answers around the task of Bible translation. But when they connect to us and say, what is going on? What are the innovative things that you're seeing that no one else is supporting? What are you excited about that others are not talking about? That's a really great question to ask an organisation because there can be stuff that's maybe on the frontiers, maybe there's higher risk that might work, might not work.
And so they're not always promoting this and talking about this because it's a new start type thing. But that work is happening. A lot of organizations have got that going on if you just simply ask them to talk about it.
JD (58:50.392)
Mm, right.
JD (59:00.088)
So would you recommend that young aspiring Christians who are looking for innovative projects and initiatives in the space go and talk to organizations on the front lines doing front lines work who know about their projects bubbling up that they would love more people to support and get behind?
James Poole (59:18.195)
Well, yes and no. Yes, I would. I absolutely would. That's a really great thing to do. Also, I would just caution that there can be a sort chronological arrogance of assuming that what's new and shiny is better than what is old and plodding. And we do just need to be careful that a lot of faithful gospel ministry is about persisting in the same direction over long periods of time.
and supporting the tried and tested and the old methods is maybe sounds somewhat less glamorous in a worldly culture that admires what is new and shiny, but might still be the right thing to do. So you need to be aware of the both hand on that.
JD (01:00:05.55)
So three more questions. So the first, and you can answer this however you want to say, I'm a donor. I'm looking to give a hundred thousand dollars or pounds to Bible translation. What's like, what would you say that that donation brings? So if I'm looking at a local church in the U S or UK, I can say, okay, that, you know, maybe that funds my pastor for a year. If I'm looking at global church planting, maybe that funds 50 or a hundred church planters for a year.
Um, if I'm looking at faith comes by hearing, I think they have some numbers on the kinds of like, uh, number of people who might listen to a Bible track, um, for, for that, for that kind of money. haven't dug super deep in the, in those kinds of input output, uh, um, connections, but how would you answer that question? If somebody donates a hundred thousand dollars to Wycliffe, um, where does that money go and what's the impact, uh, as, concretely as possible of that a hundred thousand dollars.
James Poole (01:01:04.071)
That sort of amount of money is well, it's not 100,000 dollars, 100,000 pounds, but that's that sort of that scale of money is depending on the translation context and method is either a few books of the New Testament, I mean, a significant chunk of a New Testament or we need a whole New Testament, depending on the different methodologies that we're talking about. And
James Poole (01:01:32.563)
So there's that sort of variety and that's a big deal, right? That's a really big deal for people to get God's word in their language that they can understand, they can hear God speak to them is a really, really, really big thing. And we haven't dug in so much, the incredible difference it makes, even if you speak second, third language, to have God's word in your own language and actually, and how sort of core that is to
to the gospel. So that's a really very significant thing. But you can donate in different directions to that. The number of people you could train to learn Hebrew, for example. I haven't calculated how many that is, but that's a big cohort. And so suddenly you're having an impact across multiple translations, but not only that, but embedding
exegetical skills into churches in a number of regions.
JD (01:02:34.966)
So take an impact effectiveness minded donor who wants, who believes in the cause of Bible translation, who wants to donate as effectively as possible on the margin. What would you recommend they support in Bible translation? And how can they have more confidence that their donation is supporting, let's say a more fruitful or more effective, a wiser,
program within the global Bible translation effort.
James Poole (01:03:08.467)
Well, the best way to do it, but you're not going to like this answer. The best way to do it, if you're really serious about that, is to pick an organization that you trust, that you really trust and just give undesignated. Because you're unlikely to be able to answer that question better than the leaders of that organization. Now, we tend to designate gifts, you know, because of suspicion of the organization, of maybe not sure about the strategy, and so on.
it's totally reasonable to restrict. you can have a heart for Africa and you don't want your money to go to South America then you may need to designate in some ways. But you really just have to ask the organisation each time and I do want to emphasise this. The organisations need to not set their own strategy. They need to listen to churches and leaders around the world to hear what their strategy is and how we back it. And then when we support them either financially or with careers.
If we then listen to what is being heard and what's rippling out, that's the way that we ensure that we're not in some sort of colonialism, we're not in some sort of power game, we're not saying that we in the West have all the answers and we can control everything. That's where we say we know our money and our time and our prayers are actually coming under, are being most effectively used because there's people on the ground ultimately who are best placed to make these sorts of decisions.
JD (01:04:33.038)
And what closing career advice would you offer to talented young Christians in the U S or the UK who want to tackle Bible translation?
James Poole (01:04:47.315)
I think I want to point out the scale of what is happening around Bible translation. I mentioned there's over 4,000 languages with translation programs in progress right now and the significant moment in history that we're at and the very large numbers of people involved. When you have an organization's sort of network into the thousands of people, and I guess globally the total across organizations would be well over 10,000 in this space.
what it gives you is significant career choices. So you can start off doing one thing and find that, this isn't what best fits my skills. I thought it was going to be this, but it's not. And you can pivot into something else quite easily. There is a whole world that people don't think about that's available. There's tremendous need for.
JD (01:05:37.934)
Do think there are any especially neglected paths? Like when I was interested in this space, especially when was younger, I was encouraged to go the path of a linguist that that was where they were bottlenecks. although I couldn't get confident answers from anyone. And the answer I got was from someone who later was, described to me as maybe not having the best opinion of these things. so, I, trust you, James have a really good opinion of this. where do you think there's like.
James Poole (01:05:59.452)
Yeah, so I was saying...
JD (01:06:04.28)
a special need and of course we need people in all areas but
James Poole (01:06:05.203)
What we tend to find, yeah, we tend to find that linguists will knock on our door. I've got an interest in linguistics. Is that anything I can do to help? So that's great. We need linguists, but they knock on our door already. The people who don't knock on our door are computer programmers, especially in the AI sort of space, of computational linguistics and AI type skills. That's the huge need around that.
JD (01:06:17.24)
Right.
James Poole (01:06:35.923)
The getting Bibles used is a critical thing for us. So the people with some church work backgrounds or general mission work backgrounds, how to help people to take a Bible. And a lot of people just need help with understanding the basics. know, many of us learned when we were children that, know, what a Pharisee was, what a Sadducee was, what's going on in many of those in the Bible world and what's happening. A lot of people need this help.
need help with basic Bible understandings of Bible overview and who is Jesus, why did he come? Some of these things need help and so we need lot of that sort of thing and a lot of people around just general project management, organization development, how to lead and manage things well, which pretty much all Western graduates would usually have those sort of skill sets sort of taught and of course
we will provide training in those spaces. But really, I think it is about the heart which says, it's not about me. I want to serve in this field. I want to see global churches grow and grow built on God's word. There's no history anywhere of church growth sustaining beyond the generation without a Bible translation in the language. It has to be if we want to see
growth sustaining around the world that this is a critical sort of piece of the jigsaw and if you want to serve in it then the Lord lays that on your heart then just talk to the organization because whole paths can open up that aren't always even necessarily what you you started off on what you first took the first step forwards
JD (01:08:24.256)
Awesome. well, it was great talking to you, James. And we'd love to give you the opportunity to share, anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't touched on, or even plug how Christians listening to this podcast or watching this can get more involved either by giving or working for Wycliffe or other important Bible translation efforts around the world.
James Poole (01:08:42.962)
Well, the way to get more involved is to pray, and that's the same with everything. And if you're not someone who's wanting to pray about this work, then best not to try to come and serve within it. But praying is good. Easier than prayer, actually think is giving is easier than prayer, because you can make a donation, you can write a cheque, just like you could just do it right now. That's not hard. So actually, the easiest place to start is speaking and giving.
JD (01:09:05.623)
Don't even need to go on your knees. Just, just open your laptop and click. Yeah. Easier than prayer. I love it.
James Poole (01:09:10.296)
Exactly. Just choose your favourite Bible translation organisation and just give and it's not hard to do. But as you give, often then it's you start getting information used that then motivates prayer. so that's often the easiest step to take. And I think I've just, the thing that keeps striking me and I travel quite a lot around the world is, and I'm
JD (01:09:25.176)
Mm.
James Poole (01:09:39.571)
slightly embarrassingly monolingual, I only speak English. so for me, my experience of the impact of translation is really I'm just using in English all the time. And I've had it since, you know, my whole life, can't I don't know anything different. But but when I travel, the stories of people who are getting it in their own language of what the impact it is having on them, of saying finally,
I now realise that God loves me, because when you love someone you learn to speak their language and if you don't speak their language you don't really love them. It's one of the signs when someone's dating, if someone's dating someone from another country, they start learning the language, know, on Duolingo learning the language and you think, now it's serious, it's really, that's your story, yeah, so that's what happens.
JD (01:10:26.21)
This is how I met my wife, actually. This is, yeah, yeah. I learned German this way. She was my language partner and I, was an extra motivation to learn the language so that I could keep dating her and talk to her family and so
James Poole (01:10:39.091)
Well, that's exactly it. So people say essentially God is a foreign God. God is a colonial God when he only speaks to us in a foreign language. And now he speaks to us in our own language. We know he loves us. We know he cares about us. And in fact, people say he's no longer foreign. He's one of us. The Emmanuel God with us has now come true. That's what people say. so I think reflecting on that privilege that God comes to us in our brokenness, comes to us in our fallen sinfulness.
and he saves us and he does it. It's just remarkable for me speaking English which was a language that wasn't even invented at the time of Jesus and yet I hear his voice when I read his word. Let's just make that available for everyone. It seems to be quite basic. You mentioned earlier about wash and things. Giving people clean water seems like a fairly basic task globally. Helping people to read seems like a basic task but what could be a greater privilege than
and showing people have access to God's word. I think it's a remarkable opportunity.
JD (01:11:44.462)
Yes. And that is sort of the working analogy I have in my mental model for Bible translation is like we Bible translation hard to quantify on the margin. What it produces, although we have some estimates, right? Translating a few books of the New Testament. But like Wash, it seems like really important essential infrastructure that we know across villages, across society, provide living water that provide real flourishing.
in real life. So thank you for the work that you're doing in this space and we'll continue to pray and encourage and support the work that you and your team are doing. So thanks so much for coming on, James.
James Poole (01:12:26.483)
Thank you.
