One of the languages that I’ve worked with as a linguistics consultant is Ngbugu, spoken by about 95,000 people in the Basse-Kotto prefecture in Central African Republic.
The Ngbugu translation project began in 1994, but it has seen many setbacks over the years, particularly the death of several of the mother-tongue translators. In 2015, the team asked me to help them resolve some issues with the writing system (alphabet and punctuation). It turned out that Ngbugu speakers were having trouble reading the Scripture portions that had been translated. To make a long story short, we revised the way they were writing the vowels and tones in the languages. Subsequent testing showed that the Ngbugu people were able to read the language much better.
The Ngbugu New Testament translation is slated to be completed in 2020. I was very happy that we were able to resolve these issues before they printed the New Testament!
For more information about Ngbugu, check out the following links:
And here is a link to the Jesus Film in Ngbugu:
The Olson Family 