Brother Cephas Kalinda, a member of the Zambia Branch Committee, released the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures in the Mbunda language on November 5, 2022. The Bible was released during a prerecorded program that was streamed to an audience of over 1,500. Immediately following the release, digital copies of the Bible were made available for download. Printed copies will become available in January 2023.

Mbunda is spoken mainly in Angola and Zambia. During the 1930’s, Jehovah’s Witnesses first contacted Mbunda-speaking people in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). In 2014, a Mbunda translation team was formed. The remote translation office is located in Mongu, which is in the Western Province of Zambia.

Besides the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, there is only one other Mbunda-language Bible available. However, it is expensive and often difficult to understand. Because of this, prior to this recent release, Mbunda-speaking Jehovah’s Witnesses relied mainly on the New World Translation in other languages.

Regarding the newly released Bible, one of the translators said: “It is natural, clear, easy to read and, more importantly, it conveys Bible truths accurately.”

Commenting on the challenges of using the previous translation when talking to others about the Bible, another translator stated: “The name Jehovah does not appear in any verse of the earlier translation. Instead, it uses the title ‘Our Master God’ when referring to Jehovah. This made it very difficult for people to know God’s name. But the newly released Christian Greek Scriptures uses the name Jehovah a total of 237 times.”

We are confident that this recent translation will help our Mbunda-speaking brothers and sisters draw closer to Jehovah and build even stronger faith in him.—James 4:8.