Samuel Poghisio, Kenya’s minister of Communication and Information, and a member of the Pokot community, will present the biblical translation Saturday in Nairobi, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reports.
The project to translate the Bible in its entirety to Pökoot, which is spoken by some 334,000 people in Kenya and Uganda, took 30 years.
L’Osservatore Romano noted differences in opinion over presentation and footnotes as the main stumbling block.
According to the Bible Society of Kenya, there are 53 major language groups in the country. The entire Bible has been translated into only 17 of the 53 languages.
While the New Testament has been translated into about one-third of the languages, and portions of the Bible have been translated into others, the society reports that no part of the Bible has been translated into some 20 languages used in Kenya.
The Bible society notes on its Web site that a translation of the Bible takes between 15-17 years, and costs approximately $2 a verse.
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On the Net:
Bible Society of Kenya: www.biblesociety-kenya.org/translation.html
