It’s been 25 years since the New Testament was first translated into Hawaiʻi Pidgin as “Da Jesus Book.” Now, Jehovah’s Witnesses are revisiting the Christian text to offer a new and updated Pidgin translation.
HPR spoke with Chris Song, regional spokesperson for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to learn more about their latest translation efforts.
“It's the language of the people of Hawaiʻi, local people, and when we produce literature or content in Hawaiʻi, Pidgin really resonated with the locals. It's the language of the heart,” Song said.
So far, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or “Witnesses fo Jehovah,” have fully translated the books of Matthew and Mark, with hopes to translate the rest of the New Testament.
Interview Highlights
On working with the community to create a Pidgin translation
SONG: We're embedded right into community, and as a result, they can hear how the local people talk immediately, see idiomatic expressions, and they can test it and see, is this how people talking right now? So sometimes you read some of the old Hawaiʻi Pidgin, yeah, it's not like what we're talking now. A lot of those words, we no longer use them, and new expressions are coming about. So one of the things we found is, if we embed our translation offices right in the community, there's a connection that they can make.
On members' reactions to the new translations
SONG: They just loved it. I was there at the release, and it was loud cheers. People had tears in their eyes. Even the brother, there was one of our congregants, that read from the book, and for a while he was all choked up because he couldn't read it, because it was so nice to be able to read it in the language that we grew up on.
On Pidgin’s universal appeal
SONG: It's not just Pidgin speakers. It's mainland people. It's actually, I met someone from Mexico, and they love it because our content is free. It's on our website. They can download it, they can just look at it, and they love it. They say it's simple. It reaches their heart. It connects. I don't know if I got it right, but, you know, Hawaiʻi, we had Filipino, we had Chinese, we had Japanese, Portuguese, and they had to figure out how to communicate. And so they spoke simply and to the heart, right to the point. And that's how Pidgin, in my opinion, how Hawaiʻi Pidgin came about. It was people getting along, trying to talk and communicate with each other, and sometimes they threw in some words that were indigenous to them, but after a while, it was incorporated into the language.
The new Pidgin translations can be read on the Jehovah’s Witnesses website here.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 23, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
