Being part of a global denomination is a wonderful experience but also presents several challenges…like actually being global in all we do. In many cases we have said we are a global church but have not responded as such. One area that has taken on a very USA/Canada feel is our denominational website. Without any intent of developing the site in this manner we have created a website that has very few resources in other languages. Some areas of our site have done a pretty good job but overall we have failed in this area. At the heart of the issue seems to have been finances. Getting content translated is expensive and there have not been sufficient funds available to do it correctly.
Recently we have been researching the Google translator. While we understand that this will not be 100% accurate we feel that utilizing it on some parts of our site will allow the user to possibly get the idea of the content we have posted. This is a little scary for some of us. How will this be seen by our constituents? Will they see this as an easy way out or as an attempt to close the gap we inadvertently created. We sure hope it is seen as a good gesture and a good stop gap measure until we can implement a plan to have professionals translate all of our content. Being a global church is much easier said than done…especially when you say it in English and a good percentage of your brothers and sisters in Christ don’t understand you.