William Cameron Townsend was a prominent American missionary who resolved that every man, woman and child should be able to read God’s Word in their own language. He founded the Wycliffe Bible Translators and Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International), both of which remain active today, and focus on producing translations of the Bible in minority languages. But how did this all start?
William “Cam” Townsend was born on 9th July 1896 to a lower-middle class family in Southern California. He attended college in Los Angeles but dropped out so he could become a salesman for the Los Angeles Bible House. It was under the auspices of the LA Bible House that he sailed to Guatemala in 1917 to try and sell Spanish Bibles. However he discovered that the majority of the people he came across could not understand Spanish, and in fact they didn’t even have a written form of their own language, the Cakchiquel. Townsend therefore abandoned his attempts to sell Bibles and instead began to live among the Cakchiquel Indians and learn their complex language. In just ten years, he managed to create an alphabet for it, analyse the grammar and translate the New Testament for them.
Concerned about other minority language groups, Townsend decided to open a linguistics training school in the summer of 1934 in Arkansas and named it “Camp Wycliffe” after the reformation hero, John Wycliffe, who was the first person to translate the Bible into English. The camp was designed to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods. By 1942, “Camp Wycliffe” had grown into two affiliate organizations, Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).
Today, Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL work together to translate scripture, train field personnel and promote interest in translation. More than 700 translations have been completed, and hundreds more are in the process.