It took 16 years to make, and when it finally arrived, more than 2,000 people gathered for its welcome. This was not the launch of a bestseller or the release of a long-awaited novel. In Ganta, Liberia, the crowds had come to receive the New Testament in Dan, their own language.

Behind every page were years of painstaking work by translators in Monrovia and rural communities, checking every tone mark, spelling, word, and sentence. For Dan speakers across Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, the result was something most English speakers have taken for granted for centuries: the ability to open the Bible and read the word of God for themselves.