Songs For The Nations

I recently asked my friend Bob Kauflin, the Director of Sovereign Grace Music, if he could update us on how our music is being used around the world. I’m so grateful for Bob and all things Sovereign Grace Music. It always amazes me how so may folk globally have heard of us through our songs!!! Here’s Bob’s encouraging update…

One of the privileges we’ve experienced in the 30+ years Sovereign Grace Music has been around has been seeing our songs translated into other languages. Currently, we have songs translated into 30 languages–with Spanish, German, and Russian leading the way in number of songs translated. But we also have Sovereign Grace songs translated into Indonesian, Catalan, Chinese, Farsi, Finnish, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Manipuri, Nepali, Tagalog, Thai, Welsh, Yoruba, and more.

Right now, we’re working on establishing teams in each language that can oversee translations, and maintain the balance between lyrical equivalency, melodic faithfulness, and aesthetic relevance and beauty. In other words, we want to make the songs sound as much as possible like they could have been written in the translated language.

The fruit of our labors has been evident as we’ve received encouragement from various countries in which our songs are being sung, as well as requests to translate more songs. On YouTube, our translated songs are actually doing better than our English songs. Of our top 20 videos on YouTube, 15 are Spanish! We also recently produced three Chinese songs, and are excited to release our first Portuguese album this year, containing 15 songs recorded in Brazil.

Ultimately, we’re praying God would raise up songwriters of every language to write songs in their native tongue that are theologically informed, gospel driven, and emotionally engaging.

It’s been a joy to work with different individuals over the years like Roxana Muñoz, Frank Huck, Fabiano Medeiros, Michael Ostanin, Daniel Lobo, and many others, to translate our songs. Please pray God will continue to raise up men and women who would partner with us in seeing the gospel proclaimed in song to every tribe and tongue!

Here’s a video recorded last year of the Spanish translation for “O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer”.