Late in the afternoon on Thursday, April 6, William Walewale recorded verse 21 of Revelation chapter 22, and the translation and recording of the Enga New Testament were finished. After listening to the last section of Revelation one last time to check for any errors, the recording studio was filled with tears of joy. I (Adam) was overcome with emotion as I looked at William in the soundproof room and saw tears streaming down his face. As the one reading the entire New Testament, the burden of the work had fallen more heavily upon William than any of the other translation team members. He had done a fabulous job in making the final edits to the Enga New Testament and then recording all twenty-seven books in just nine weeks. As he emerged from the soundproof room, we embraced one another as we felt the burden of this enormous task being lifted in a short instant and as we realized that our translation of the Enga New Testament would now be easily accessible to the more than four hundred thousand people who speak the Enga language. The work we had begun nearly ten years prior on October 18, 2013, had finally reached completion. As expected, we made hundreds of minor adjustments to the text as we did the recording. In the world of Bible translation, it is always advisable to make an audio recording of your translation before printing it because the process of doing the recording serves as a final check for the translation itself. Although we made hundreds of adjustments, they were almost all extremely minor as we found the core of the translation itself to be quite good. A few days ago, on April 26, the technician who did the recording for us finished his post-production edits. I then uploaded the recording to Google Drive for the translation team members to download and begin distributing in their communities. Our prayer is that the audio recordings will spread like wildfire over the coming weeks and months.
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| Embracing William after completing the Enga New Testament recording |
In last month’s newsletter Martha shared how much she had wanted to be in the room when William recorded the final chapter of the Enga New Testament. Although Martha had to be in California for nearly four weeks during the recording due to the passing of her father, by God’s grace she was able to be there with us when William finished the recording. Not only that, but Jacob’s school schedule also allowed him to witness this historic moment as well. Having Martha and Jacob there with us made the completion of the recording an even more joyous occasion.
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| Martha in the recording studio on the last day |
Throughout the course of our translation work, and especially during our nine weeks in the recording studio, the Enga translators and I would often conclude our day by singing the Doxology. Soon after William completed the recording, the entire translation team and I crammed into the soundproof room, along with Jacob, and sang the Doxology together. Although we may not be winning any Grammy Awards for our singing ability, we have decided to include our rendition of the Doxology at the end of the Enga New Testament audio recording to represent our thankfulness to God for enabling us to finish this monumental task.
What now?Although the translation and recording are now complete, there is still work to do to typeset the Enga New Testament to prepare it for print. We have received funding to print five thousand copies of the Enga New Testament as well as five thousand copies of an Enga-English edition of the New Testament. We are currently in the process of typesetting the Enga-only edition. When that is complete, we will begin typesetting the Enga-English edition. We were able to complete the more difficult preparatory work before and during the recording, such as selecting the dimensions of the printed books, fonts, layout, black and white illustrations, color photos, and maps. With most of that work done, our main job now is to review the PDF samples the typesetter sends us to make sure everything looks okay before going to print. I am hoping to have the Enga-only edition complete by the end of May and the Enga-English edition complete by the end of June. Please pray with us that we would complete the typesetting soon so that we can send the New Testament out for print.
