With the completion of the French translation of our Travel Guide to the Bible in October, Clear and Simple Media engaged in our most ambitious field-testing project to date. All of our publications pass through many steps before they go to press. When we put a book into translation, the process is more complicated. The Travel Guide is 270 pages in length, so the translation checks, proof-reading, and field-testing require more time and involve multiple readers.

Since French is a language used in many countries where we work, we decided to send the book to readers and church-leaders in France, Haiti, and Burkina Faso. These are all places where we have traveled and where other of our books are in use.

This week, we began to receive feedback from some of our field-testing participants. The letters included observations about the translation and suggestions to make the book more accessible to new readers. (While French is French, the dialect that is common in Port-au-Prince is not quite the same as the French in Paris – or in Ouagadougou.) Along with these suggestions and observations, the notes also included several words of encouragement. Here are portions from two of those notes.

Greetings to you and your lovely family

I’ve seen the book in French and spent hours of my time to run through its pages. In fact, the book is more than what you had in mind when writing it. For you had in mind two types of persons, whom you thought, would be helped by the book: new readers and the new readers of the Bible. But, the material ” GUIDE BIBLIQUE ” is more than being helpful to only two types of persons. It is a richly helpful book, useful to pastors, teachers, and old Bible readers too. In the areas where the book does not provide answers to the reader, it serves as a GUIDE to help them find the needed answers.

How I wish this book would be translated into my mother tongue, Gurmancema.

Combari (Fada N’Gourma, Burkina Faso)

God bless you.

I have read much of the book. It is helpful and has plenty of information about the books of the Bible.

In fact, according to me, it will be helpful for everyone in the church. From the leaders to the members of the congregation.

It is a good idea that you plan on printing it in Haiti. You’re doing a wonderful job among the evangelical community. May God keep blessing you!

Vorb (Port-Au-Prince, Haiti)

After we look at the feedback we have received and make adjustments to the translation, we plan to print the books in both Haiti and West Africa.