How do you translate into a language that has never been written down? Christian missionaries faced this problem centuries ago, and in many locations they invented alphabets just so they could give the native people a Bible.
In 1931 in Guatemala, Cameron Townsend and his wife produced a New Testament in the Cakchiquel Indian language—after learning the language and writing down words that had only been spoken aloud, never written.
This venture led to the founding of Wycliffe Bible Translators, named for the great English translator of the Middle Ages, John Wycliffe. Portions of the Bible have been translated into more than three hundred languages.