Word of God presented to people in more than 3200 languages

Illustration of the distribution of Bibles in China up to 1908 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 2016 a milestone was reached having the Word of God presented to people in more than 3200 languages.

At least 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple do not have the full Bible avail­able in their first lan­guage. Over 684 mil­lion of these have the New Tes­ta­ment; oth­ers have por­tions or at least some level of trans­la­tion or prepara­tory work begun.

There is known ac­tive trans­la­tion and/or lin­guis­tic de­vel­op­ment hap­pen­ing in 2400 lan­guages across more than 165 countries.

As of 1 Oc­to­ber 2016, a new method of iden­ti­fy­ing trans­la­tion need sug­gests over 160 mil­lion peo­ple, speak­ing 1700-1800 lan­guages, may need some form of Bible trans­la­tion to begin.

To­day ap­prox­i­mately 100 or­gan­i­sa­tions from more than 60 na­tions form the Wycliffe Global Al­liance. But also outside that alliance several groups, like the Bible students the Jehovah Witnesses and others are working at bible translations.

By pro­vid­ing staff, funds, train­ing, trans­la­tion and sup­port ser­vices, Al­liance or­gan­i­sa­tions are cur­rently in­volved in al­most 2000 of the 2422 lan­guages with ac­tive work.

Wycliffe Global Al­liance or­gan­i­sa­tions and per­son­nel have been in­volved in the trans­la­tion of Bibles and New Tes­ta­ments in more than 900 lan­guages. At least one of the Bible’s 66 books has been pub­lished in an ad­di­tional 600 lan­guages. Many other lan­guages have other ini­tial por­tions published.
Work­ing in com­mu­nity part­ner­ships, Al­liance per­son­nel not only as­sist in Scrip­ture-re­lated goals but also help pro­duce thou­sands of re­sources for lit­er­acy, ed­u­ca­tion, health and other com­mu­nity-based ob­jec­tives along­side Scripture.

An ever in­creas­ing num­ber of Scrip­ture prod­ucts are now in dig­i­tal for­mats as text, au­dio and video. These are of­ten avail­able on web­sites, so­cial me­dia or through a va­ri­ety of phone apps, as well as in for­mats that can be eas­ily shared phone-to-phone in places with lim­ited internet.

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Find also to read:

1. Written and translated by different men over thousands of years
2. Bible Translating and Concordance Making
3. Looking at notes of Samuel Ward and previous Bible translation efforts in English
4. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #1 Pre King James Bible
5. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #2 King James Bible versions
6. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #3 Women and versions
7. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #4 Steps to the women’s bibles
8. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #5 Further steps to women’s bibles
9. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #6 Revisions of revisions
10. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #7 Jewish versions
11. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #8 Selective Bibles and selective people
12. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #9 Restored names and Sacred Name Bibles
13. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #10 Journaling Bibles and illustrative women
14. Missed opportunity for North Korea

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