The other day we translated the first draft of the 21st Bible story in the Ludari language. This story in the series is not actually a story but rather a lesson which bridges the gap between the 20 stories from the Old Testament and the 29 from the New Testament in order to explain how the Messiah was foretold in the Old and revealed in the New.

One of the pictures (shown above) is of King David and says that the Messiah would be a descendant of David. Unfortunately, Ludari has no word for “descendant”. In the first occurrence of the word (highlighted above), the translator used the Ludari word “seed” which correctly captures the biblical view of descendants, but may be easily misunderstood by unbelievers hearing these stories for the first time. (How can a person be a seed?) In the second instance (also highlighted above), he borrowed the Croatian word for descendant, which is decidedly more clear, but is not a Ludari word.

These are the types of quandaries we wrestle with all the time. When we translated the story of the 10 plagues, since there is no word for “plagues”, we had to use the term for punishment, and since there is no word for exodus, we used the term for “exit” or “going out”. I noticed that in the first draft he spelled “going out” four different ways. This is a common challenge since this language has only rarely been written.

Please continue to pray as we translate Bible stories into Ludari and make plans to translate Luke. Thank you for your part in making this possible.

Todd & Pamala Price (Kirsten, Daniel, Ariela)