When we complete a translation project, it marks a milestone; a “mission accomplished” in one sense. But in another sense, it is only a beginning. With the completion of the translation of the A Simple Word website, we celebrate a milestone. And – we were ready for “the next step” – the operational launch of the site in Africa. But first, we would celebrate another milestone.

Guide Biblique

On Sunday, August 25, my friend Nebié Badiou and I attended a worship service in one of the larger evangelical churches in Ouagadougou. Our purpose was to present to the leaders there the newest book from Clear and Simple Media, Guide Biblique, the French version of the Travel Guide to the Bible. The book represents our best effort to accomplish our primary goal at Clear and Simple Media. To help people read the Bible. To help them understand what they read. The people received the book with many expressions of gratitude for making the book available in French. 

This congregation was familiar with Clear and Simple Media having used the French translation of Simple Truths in Sunday School classes and as a tool to prepare new believers for baptism. They were confident that this new tool would help them continue to disciple the people in their church. Because this church (and Nebié) is part of a network of more than 200 churches in Burkina Faso, they plan to make the eBook available to all of the pastors in the fellowship. The eventual goal is to print and distribute the book in the near future. 

With that task completed, we could now focus on the primary reason we made the trip to Burkina Faso. Over the past months, we had done multiple tests on the French translation of our content delivery site A Simple Word. Because the site contains more than 150,000 words of content, the task was quite tedious at times. Pages had to be read, edited, and reposted. Because the internet and cellular connections are often quite weak, we had to rebuild the site to make sure that it was as mobile-friendly as possible. We had secured the French URL address (www.véritésimple.org). Now we were here to see if our efforts had paid off. [To Be Continued]