“And [Jesus] said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’

‌When we translate the Bible for Roma, we try to make sure that the translations are accurate and clear. One of the issues we had to think through when we translated Luke 10:2 was the use of “And” at the beginning of the verse. When it says in v. 1 that Jesus “sent them on ahead of him” and then in v. 2 says, “And he said to them,” we need to be careful and realize that this is not strictly sequential or chronological. He would not send them away and then after they had left, tell them something. “And” here is not sequential, but rather is simply adding information to inform us that he not only chose them and sent them, but he also gave them instructions.

In English translation, it may be more natural to use a pluperfect verb, such as “Now he had told them…” The Roma languages we are translating into do not have a pluperfect verb form. We cannot indicate that one event had already taken place before another event happened just by the choice of the verb form; we can’t say, like in English, “He had told them.”

‌So, we had to be more creative in the translations we did in the Roma languages. In the Arli language, we translated it as “Before they went, Jesus said to them”; in the Chergash language, we translated it as “Before he sent them, he said to them”; in the Ludari language, we said, “When they prepared to go, he told them.”