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For most of Wycliffe's history, translators worked at translating the Scriptures for one language at a time—a task that could take several decades to complete, depending on a variety of factors.
In recent years, translation teams have begun to talk more and more about a strategy called "language clusters." This approach does not work in every context, but when it is deemed to be an appropriate strategy, it speeds the work of translation significantly.
A language program cluster can be defined as two or more language groups (often closely related) that work together with a shared language development strategy, sharing personnel and resources. Languages may be grouped together to form a cluster based on:
- linguistic relatedness
- social relationships
- geographic proximity
- number of churches/denominations working among the same languages
Working in Language Clusters
In Africa, the cluster strategy is proving to be helpful for translators working in the Bantu language family. It includes 500 languages, spoken by about 200 million Africans from the equator to South Africa. Of these, approximately 14 million individuals speak one of 250 languages with no Scriptures.
One component of the Bantu Initiative is to support and encourage the development of linguistic tools that can describe the common features of Bantu languages and so speed up language analysis. Linguistic tools to serve many Bantu languagesare currently being developed, tested, and either completed or nearing completion.
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