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From Gospel Translations

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Purpose

Our purpose at Gospel Translations is to make gospel-centered resources accessible for Christians of every nation and language. We hope Christians everywhere will be able to learn about the gospel in their own languages and without financial impediments.

We believe that increasing the accessibility of gospel-centered teaching will help local churches everywhere to lay strong doctrinal foundations, and that those strong churches will in turn bring much glory to our common Savior, Jesus Christ.

Why Translation?

We believe that making resources accessible is critical because while the center of Christianity has shifted away from the West, Christian book publishing and distribution remains heavily concentrated in North America. This imbalance means that most of the world's Christians cannot read or even afford the majority of Christian books, leaving something of a vacuum for theological training for both Christian leaders and laypeople around the world.

In both the near- and long-term, we believe this deficit of bliblical resources will be very costly to the Church. False gospels will be preached uncontested, and new converts will either be led astray or become disillusioned with the faith when their expectations of health and wealth go unrealized.

Our hope is that by producing and freely distributing translations of gospel-centered books and articles, many will come to know and put their faith in the true gospel of Jesus Christ and his saving grace.

Ours is by no means the only valuable contribution being made to this problem, but we do believe we have a significant role to play in globalizing access to Christian publishing.

Timeline

We're a young organization still, but here are some milestones for those interested:

• March 2007—Andre Yee starts discussing the idea of a translation project using the open source model. Original name of the project is Open Source Mission.
• May 2007—Sovereign Grace Ministries signs on as first partner ministry.
• June 2007—Formal planning meetings and pilot projects begin.
• July 2007—First staff person hired part-time. Desiring God joins as a partner.
• September 2007—Gospel Translations chosen as the brand name for the project. Wiki launched and first volunteer-recruitment drive occurs. 9Marks joins as a partner.
• October 2007—100^th translator enrolls.
• November 2007—Second part-time staff person hired.
• February 2008—100^th translation completed. Chapel Library joins as a partner.
• March 2008—Promo video released in blogosphere and soon shown at the Together for the Gospel and New Attitude conferences.
• April 2008—Ligonier Ministries joins as a partner.
• May 2008—250^th translator enrolls.
• August 2008—500^th translation published.
• September 2008—25^th language published.

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Web 2.0 Methodology

With our goal of increasing accessibility of biblically-sound resources, we can most easily be understood as a collection of services to facilitate the creation and distribution of translations:

• We partner with publishers and ministries to acquire licenses for the translation and distribution of their copyrighted materials
• This wiki facilitates translations by our volunteers, enabling online collaboration and peer review
• When translations are completed, this wiki also serves as the distribution portal where visitors can come and easily browse the resources available in various languages

While we are happy to host and distribute translations of older works as well, our current focus is on contemporary writings. There are several reasons for this, and perhaps the most obvious is that we want to make the work of translating as simple as possible for our volunteers. Thus the lack of emphasis at this time on "olde works."

Key Benefits

Volunteer-driven internet initiatives have proven successful in a broad set of disciplines, with perhaps software development and educational projects being the most prominent. We believe this model brings a lot to the table for translation and publishing too—namely:

• Economic efficiency: with overhead costs kept extremely low, accessibility does not need to be driven by financial considerations
• Quality: it's not just that anyone can improve on another's translation—the history of online collaboration projects suggest that someone almost always will. As the wiki grows and draws more experienced linguists, we trust that quality will only get better and better over time.
• Scalability: online projects like this have proven to scale very well from local start-ups to global initiatives, and we are building from the ground up on the same software that runs the world's biggest wikis
• Resource discovery: as the project spreads, we believe it will uncover a wealth of now-unknown resources within the church, from skilled translators to international authors

</tab> <tab title="Partners"> Several Christian ministries have contributed a great deal to Gospel Translations by allowing us to use some of their copyrighted materials on this website. We are extremely grateful for their generosity and support in giving us books and articles to translate!

Sovereign Grace Ministries is a church-planting ministry based near Washington, DC. In addition to significant logistical and financial support, they have allowed us to use all of the books in their Pursuit of Godliness series and their Perspectives booklets.

Desiring God is a teaching ministry led by John Piper and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They have been extremely supportive of our initiative, giving us permission to translate the hundreds of articles published on their website and lending much helpful counsel.

9Marks is teaching ministry based in Washington, DC, that publishes resources primarily on church leadership and polity. They have very kindly given us access to many of their resources, including several translations that they had already produced.

Ligonier is the teaching ministry of Dr. R.C. Sproul. They've helped us by donating a large number of previously published articles from their Tabletalk magazine to our library.

Editora Fiel is a Brazilian publisher that has been making translated Christian resources available to Portuguese speakers for years. They donated to us all issues of Fé Para Hoje, a periodical containing translated articles from Charles Spurgeon, Sinclair Ferguson, R.C. Sproul, and many others.

Chapel Library sends Christ-centered materials from prior centuries worldwide without charge. Its authors include the Puritans, Spurgeon, Bonar, Ryle, Pink, Bunyan, and many others. For printed copies in North America, contact Chapel Library.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood exists to set forth the teachings of the Bible about the complementary differences between men and women, created equally in the image of God. They've contributed several articles to our content library.

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