Open Godʼs Word in Contemporary Chichewa (NYAOGW)

Overview

Open God's Word in Contemporary Chichewa (Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero), also distributed as the CCL, is a full Bible in the Chichewa language, published by Biblica with an initial New Testament copyright of 2002 and a complete Bible edition in 2016. It is made available under an open MIT License. The full Bible was launched in Malawi in late 2017, making it the first contemporary-language full Bible in Chichewa. [1] The project reportedly took three generations of effort to complete. [1] While Chichewa has had Scripture since the early 1900s -- the traditional Buku Lopatulika (Holy Bible) was first printed in 1922, translated by a commission of Dutch Reformed Church missionaries and Malawian contributors -- that version uses archaic language that many younger readers find difficult to understand. [2] [3] The Chewa people are the largest ethnic group in Malawi, and Chichewa/Nyanja, a Bantu language, is the de facto language of national identity in Malawi; this contemporary translation was designed to be accessible to modern Chichewa speakers across Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique.

Language and People

Nyanja (ISO 639-3: nya) is spoken by approximately 14,381,000 people in Malawi. [Glottolog: nyan1308]

Publishing and Organizations

Published by Biblica. Translation type: First.

References