Madi (Gira) Scripture Portions — Papua New Guinea
Overview
The Madi scripture portions are four books of the New Testament in the Madi (Gira) language of Papua New Guinea, published by Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. and available via YouVersion/Bible.com (ID 3954). Work on these portions spans 2011–2024, with a Gospel of Mark text-and-audio app carrying a 2019 copyright and the YouVersion edition updated in 2024. The translation was produced through the Gwahatike Cluster project, overseen by Papua New Guinean translator-consultant Nafian Saremo of Madang Province, who has worked in Bible translation for over 27 years. The confirmed books include Mark, Luke, and Galatians; a fourth book completes the "4 books" edition. Note: this is a completely separate language from Ma'di (ISO: mhi), a Nilo-Saharan language of Uganda and South Sudan.
Language and People
Madi (ISO 639-3: grg; autonym: Gira, also recorded as Girara or Gorovu) is a Trans-New Guinea language belonging to the Finisterre-Huon family: Trans-New Guinea → Finisterre-Huon → Finisterre → Gusap-Mot branch. The Finisterre-Huon family was formally described by Claassen and McElhanon in their 1970 paper "Languages of the Finisterre Range" (Pacific Linguistics A-23); it comprises approximately 60–65 languages.
The Madi/Gira community lives in the foothills of the Finisterre Range in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, at approximately 5.63°S, 146.41°E — near the Ramu River valley in the Gusap-Mot area. Madang Province alone contains 173 languages; PNG as a whole has more than 800, making it the world's most linguistically diverse country.
Estimated speakers: approximately 380 (Ethnologue, 2003) to 700 (Joshua Project, more recent). The language is classified as shifting (endangered) — younger community members are moving to Tok Pisin or other regional languages as primary language.
The Gira people practice subsistence gardening, pig husbandry, and hunting typical of the PNG highlands-foothills zone. The community is reported at approximately 95% nominally Christian, though Seed Company documentation notes that roughly 70% of PNG highland-fringe residents blend traditional animistic beliefs with Christianity — maintaining spirit beliefs and consulting traditional healers alongside church membership. The Gira are classified as a "reached" people group (not "unreached/frontier").
Publishing and Organizations
Published by Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc., with production coordinated through Nafian Saremo, a Papua New Guinean Bible translation consultant from Madang Province who attained full SIL/Wycliffe consultant status in 2017 after a Seed Company internship from 2014. Saremo leads the Gwahatike Cluster project, which covers both the Madi/Gira language and the related Asaro'o language. Seed Company (a Wycliffe affiliate focused on indigenous-led translation) provides partnership support for the cluster.