A total of 3.2 million Ghana Cedis is said to have been spent in the translation of the New Testament of The Holy Bible into the Gurune dialect version. Rev. Dr. Enoch Aryee-Atta, general secretary of the Bible Society of Ghana exclusively disclosed to Word News during the inauguration of a 13 member pastoral-planning committee tasked to oversee the launching of the translated Gurune version.
He gave the breakdown. “It cost the Bible Society of Ghana $18dollars to translate just a verse from the original languages of the Hebrew and Arabic for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament into any of the Ghanaian language, so what we are doing for Gurune, every verse cost us $18dollars. We have 31,104 verses in the Bible and that will cost US$559,872 and if you exchange that to Ghana Cedis, it is about 3.2m just to do the translation alone before you talk about the actual publication”.
According to Rev. Aryee-Atta, the cost of translation was fully funded by the churches and Christians across the country.
The Bible Society of Ghana, Rev. Aryee-Atta explained is a Christian organization that seeks to make God’s Word available and affordable to Christians throughout the country through all the nine major languages in Ghana and that they (Bible society of Ghana) have been able to translate the Bible into the major nine languages constituting about 90% of the population of Ghana.
Rev Dr. Enoch called on the people of the Upper East Region, specifically the gurune speaking communities to have themselves enrolled into the free Gurune literacy program that is currently ongoing in most communities. This, he said will better equip them relative to their understanding of the holy book. He has thus called on Frafras to secure copies of the soon-to-be-unveiled Gurune version of the New Testament.
Official launch of the translated version of the holy book is slated for November 14, 2021 in the Upper East Regional capital, Bolgatanga.
Gaspard Ayuureneeya/ www.mywordfmonline.com