Institute plans audio recordings of scripture

 THE Summer Institute of Linguistics has embarked on audio recording of translated and published Bible scriptures for the New Guinea Islands region.

Institute members Lauren and Connie Roonia, who have worked in Papua New Guinea for the past 12 years, are involved in this project.

Lauren said the project was being trialed in NGI and if successful, it would be made available to other parts of the country.

“We are planning a training course for audio recording for 12 participants, teaching them to record the translated and published scriptures for the islands region,” Lauren said.

“There are about 22 new testaments that have been published and have not been put in audio form. So one of our goals is to train these participants on how to do audio recording on the computer so that they can be put in various types of media including MP3 players, cellphones, produce programmes that can be played on the radio.”

Lauren said they were specifically targeting six of the 12 participants who would be involved fulltime. The goal is to complete at least three of the testament recordings next year.

He said there were 33 Bible translation programmes they would be working on with 22 published and there were others in the process of being translated and published.

“Our desire is that in each of these languages, our people will be able to listen to the scriptures.

“PNG is a country of oral culture and about 70% of the world is oral cultures. So even if people can read, it is not part of their culture. We have seen the real need for the people to hear the scripture,” he said.