Bibliya Mosantu Ndobo — Ndobo Scripture Portions (DR Congo)
Overview
Bibliya Mosantu Ndobo ("the Holy Bible in Ndobo") is the Gospel of Luke in the Ndobo language of Équateur Province, DRC, published by Beyond Translation under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license and available via YouVersion/Bible.com (ID 4323; abbreviation: NDW). This represents the first scripture translation into Ndobo, produced as part of Beyond Translation's DRC Church-Centric Bible Translation initiative in which local church communities own the translated text. Ndobo is one of several closely related Bantu languages of the Ngiri River system, sharing the same floodplain island ecology as Libinza (liz), Likila (lie), and Ntomba.
Language and People
Ndobo (ISO 639-3: ndw; autonym: Ndoobo) is a Bantu language: Niger-Congo → Atlantic-Congo → Benue-Congo → Bantoid → Narrow Bantu → Zone C (Bangi-Ntomba/Mongo group). It is closely related to other Ngiri River and Congo floodplain languages.
The Ndobo community inhabits the islands and river margins of the Ngiri River and the broader Congo River floodplain, in Tshuapa Province and/or Équateur Province, northwestern DRC.
Estimated speakers: figures are limited due to the remote and inaccessible nature of this floodplain region; likely several thousand to tens of thousands.
Cultural Context
The Ndobo share the ecological and cultural characteristics of the broader Ngiri River island communities: permanent residence on elevated river islands, dependence on fishing and floodplain agriculture, and seasonal mobility following river flood cycles. These communities developed distinct speech varieties in relative geographic isolation on their respective islands and river segments.
Publishing and Organizations
Published by Beyond Translation (beyondtranslation.org, Arlington, Texas) under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, as part of their DRC 15-language community translation initiative.