The Seychelles Bible Society has announced that it has completed the translation of the entire Bible in Kreol Seselwa. 

The Bible Society plans to publish the Creole version of the Bible towards the end of this year.

The Bible will be published at the same time in two editions. The first edition will comprise the books of the Old Testament, the books of the Deutero-Canon, and the books of the New Testament. This version of the Bible is often referred to as the Catholic Version. The second edition will comprise the books of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament, but will not have the books of the Deutero-Canon. This version of the Bible is widely used by the Protestant Churches, and is often referred to as the Protestant Version.

The Seychelles Bible Society published in the year 2000 the New Testament under the title Nouvo Testaman. The text of this publication has been maintained in the new publication of the entire Bible. The text has seen some minor corrections at few places and some passages have been revised. In particular, difficult passages have been made more clear and comprehensible in the new edition. Footnotes and references to the Old Testament have also been added to the text of the New Testament.

These will help the reader understand the writers of the New Testament when they refer to passages of the Old Testament.

The Seychelles Bible Society will make the text of the entire Bible available on the internet. Two electronic publishers will offer the text on the internet free of charge. These are YouVersion and the other one is BibleSearch. The latter adds also a search function for the user.

The Seychelles Bible Society has collaborated closely with the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the Pentecostal Assembly of Seychelles in order to present for all Churches an acceptable translation of the Biblical text in Kreol.

A group of reviewers of the Churches involved followed the translators during the course of the 10 years the translation project lasted. 

The translation work was carried out under the auspices of the United Bible Societies, a world fellowship of 146 Bible societies. A consultant of the United Bible Societies advised and counselled the team of translators during the course of the work. He confirmed during a recent visit to Seychelles that the translation of the Bible in Kreol Seselwa meets the standards for translations of the Bible of the United Bible Societies.

At present 495 languages out of the 7105 languages that exist have a full Bible. The number of full Bibles increases every year. It may well be that the translation in Kreol Seselwa becomes number 500! At any rate Kreol Seselwa is one of the very few national languages in the world that has not yet a full Bible, but will soon have one, and will then join the ranks of countries with a Bible in the national language. For more information about the United Bible Societies and more details of Bible statistics please refer to the official website of the United Bible Societies: www.unitedbiblesocieties.org.

The Seychelles Bible Society has set up a Publication Fund for the Bible. It wishes to ensure that a good stock of Bibles will be printed in order to be able to serve all those who wish to possess a Bible in the mother tongue. The project is costly and is beyond the financial possibilities of the Bible Society. The Society invites donors and sponsors to contribute towards the Publication Fund.

Forrás: www.nation.sc