The Lubuagan Kalinga New Testament

Landscape in Lubuagan

My first administrative job as a missionary was to supervise the translation projects in the province of Kalinga in the Northern Philippines. Lubuagan was one of those projects, and I fell in love with the translators working on it -- Fidel, Vicky, and Lito in the Philippines and Bruce from Australia. Any time a scripture translation project has more than one translator, the final revision stage is especially challenging. Just like each of the biblical authors wrote in the original languages using their own styles, so too the modern-day translators translate in their own ways. (And that's not to mention the different styles of the (usually) English translations those folks are reading to understand the original.) Syncing all those translation styles into one coherent text can take a long time and require each translator to compromise their own convictions about certain key terms and verses.

Performing a newly-composed worship song

That's why I was so thrilled to read on Wycliffe's prayer blog this week that the Lubuagan team is typesetting the New Testament -- the last stage of the process before sending the book to the printer. There are few tasks more difficult than translating the Bible, and doing so from a remote area in a developing country makes the achievement even more special.

Besides my role as a supervisor over the Lubuagan project, I had the privilege of leading a song-writing workshop there several years ago. Here is one of the songs that was composed that week: Michayaw Ka Apo Dios (We Worship You, Lord God). That link should download an mp3 file of the song. Sorry that I don't have the full translation of the lyrics.