What We’re Passionate About

At the Nida Institute, our work is guided by a set of long-standing commitments about Scripture, communication, and the global Church. These convictions shape how we think, what we prioritize, and how we discern what faithfulness looks like in a complex, multilingual and multicultural world.

Scholarly Excellence

We are deeply committed to rigor and intellectual honesty. Our work is grounded in serious biblical scholarship, linguistic insight, and peer conversation. We believe high standards matter—not as an academic exercise, but because translators, teachers, and communities deserve resources they can trust.

The Majority World

From the beginning, our work has centered on the majority world. We recognize that the present and future of the Church—and of Bible translation—is global. This commitment shapes whose questions we listen to, whose voices we elevate, and whose realities guide our priorities.

Cross-Cultural Ways of Knowing and Communicating

Faithful translation requires more than accuracy with words; it requires attention to how meaning actually travels across cultures and languages. We are passionate about learning from ways of knowing beyond the modern Western academy—where meaning is carried through story, image, performance, repetition, community memory, and lived practice. We continually ask not only what is correct, but what truly communicates.

Orality and Embodied Communication

Most of the world engages knowledge orally and communally. We are committed to approaches that honor oral cultures, performance, memory, and embodied participation—not only printed texts. Scripture was first heard before it was read, and we believe that impacts how it is translated, taught, and received today.

The Last Mile of Access

We care deeply about Scripture reaching real people in forms they can understand, receive, and live by. Faithful translation does not end with publication; it continues until Scripture can be meaningfully engaged within local communities, languages, and lives. Serving the global Church means paying attention to that last mile.

At the Nida Institute, we are convinced that faithful translation is both deeply human and richly interdisciplinary.
Our passion is to serve this work with humility, insight, and love—so that Scripture may be clearly understood and faithfully lived across cultures and generations.