Ken & Jessica Olson

If you lived in Rochester during the mid 1980’s, perhaps you had the occasion to meet or talk with Ken Olson. Ken attended the then named Rochester Community College and later worked at both IBM and Mayo. In 1989, Ken joined Wycliffe Bible Translators. His work with Wycliffe was first in the Democratic Republic of Congo (previously Zaire) on the Mono language translation project. Mono is a language spoken by about 65,000 people in the northwest part of Congo. When civil war broke out in Congo between 1996 and 2001, Ken earned his Ph.D. in linguistics. He also spent time in the Central Africa Republic teaching at the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology.

His work with Wycliffe encompasses four main areas. The first is the Mono language translation project in Congo. This project has gone through a change since it first began and has refocused on having nationals do the translation work. The idea was to train national residents in the aspects involved with translation and then have them do the actual translation work. It is well known that it is easier to translate into your native language than to learn a new language and then try to translate something into the new language. Two people were chosen and were sent for extensive training at Bangui Evangelical School of Theology with Ken doing some of the training. These nationals have begun full-time translation of books of the Bible into the Mono language. Mark, Genesis, Ruth and others have already been translated and the translation work is progressing at a good pace.

Ken’s second area of focus is teaching. Wycliffe has affiliations with several schools to help with linguistics instruction. Ken taught at Bangui and last summer taught at the University of North Dakota. Linguistics research is Ken’s third area of focus. His study of exotic speech sounds has kept Ken in the linguistic limelight in the past two years. He, with help from other colleagues, was able to document a new speech sound. Named the Labial Flap, this speech sound needed its own letter character to represent it. This new sound, and corresponding character, has been added to the International Alphabet by the International Phonetic Association. He is also working on another exotic sound called the Interdental Approximant. God has provided Ken with many opportunities to connect with those in sound research, including those in the secular linguistics field.

Ken’s fourth focus and perhaps most important focus is his recent marriage to Jessica. They were married on February 3, 2007. Jessica has been a Wycliffe missionary in Cameroon, Africa. They will be working with Wycliffe here in the U.S. for a while longer as they focus on making a solid start with their marriage and pursuing their life together as one. They are very happy about the prospect of sharing their lives and serving God together. Since they both have had experience in Africa there is a good possibility they could end up back there.