Buku di Santu — Pelende Scripture Portions (DR Congo)
Overview
Buku di Santu ("the Holy Book") is the Gospel of Luke in the Pelende language of Kwango Province, DRC, published by Beyond Translation under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license and available via YouVersion/Bible.com (ID 4395; abbreviation: PPP). This is the first scripture translation into Pelende, produced as part of Beyond Translation's DRC Church-Centric Bible Translation initiative. Pelende is a variety of Yaka (the community self-name is Iyaka), spoken in the Kwango River basin of southwestern DRC.
Language and People
Pelende (ISO 639-3: ppp; autonym: Iyaka; also called Yaka-Pelende or Kipende) is a Bantu language: Niger-Congo → Atlantic-Congo → Benue-Congo → Bantoid → Narrow Bantu → Zone H/K border, related to Yaka (H.31) and the broader Kongo-Yaka language complex. The Pelende dialect is sometimes considered a variety of Yaka (yaf), though Ethnologue assigns it a separate ISO code, reflecting sufficient distinctiveness to require a dedicated translation.
The Pelende community inhabits Kwango Province (formerly part of Bandundu Province, divided 2015), southwestern DRC — in the Kwango River basin, near the border with Angola. The region is part of the broader Yaka cultural zone.
Estimated speakers: approximately 19,000 (Pelende-specific count; the broader Yaka language complex has ~400,000 speakers).
Cultural Context
The Yaka people of the Kwango-Kwilu region are historically known for their distinctive masks and initiation ceremonies (mukanda circumcision schools). The Kwango River basin was part of the sphere of the historic Yaka Kingdom (18th–19th century), which controlled trade routes connecting the lower Congo to the interior. The region experienced severe disruption during the Belgian colonial rubber extraction era (1885–1908) and has been affected by successive post-independence conflicts. The Pelende sub-group occupies the southern portion of the Yaka language territory.
Publishing and Organizations
Published by Beyond Translation (beyondtranslation.org, Arlington, Texas) under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.