Your prayers and support for God’s Word help accelerate translation work. In the 1970s, Cambodia had been taken over by the Khmer Rouge, a Communist regime that sought to eradicate all those who were educated. In the horrific four-year reign, almost two million people were slaughtered and the phrase “the killing fields” was used to describe the atrocities.
Now forty years later, in Phnom Penh, the city that was once devastated by unspeakable violence, a translation workshop was held, and 14 bilingual, theologically trained pastors and translators participated. Their goal? To translate key biblical terms from English into Khmer, Cambodia’s gateway language, benefiting more than 13 million Khmer speakers throughout Cambodia and Asia.
The team worked four days to translate 360 of the 900-plus key Biblical terms with their definitions. Then they returned to their homes and villages, working remotely to complete the rest of the key words in less than a month.
These key biblical terms and definitions will help national translators understand important biblical terms to find suitable equivalent terms in their own language. The Scriptures translated into any of the 16 other Cambodian languages will be checked against the Khmer key words to ensure accuracy.
We thank God that He used a people marked for destruction to help bring hope and restoration to their people as they receive, read, and apply His transforming Word in the languages of their hearts.
