Website caters to the many languages of the Keweenaw

HOUGHTON — When Roland of Accra, Ghana saw the words on the screen, his face lit up. He relates: “We felt so happy and excited to know people can get information regardless of the language of their hearts. It is amazing how a simple thing like having a website in your native language can be so refreshing to you.”

Roland and his wife Mavis speak the Kwa language of Ga. It is their mother tongue, the language of their heart – but they rarely use it outside of their home since they immigrated to the Keweenaw Peninsula. Now they study the Bible in that language every week.

In a linguistically diverse area such as we have in the Keweenaw, communication can be a challenge. We have students from approximately 60 different countries attending Michigan Tech and Finlandia University, and accompanying them are many different languages. A true challenge indeed!

To meet challenges like this, the educational website JW.org has reached over 1,000 languages in downloadable content, an unprecedented translation milestone.