By Obianuju Mbah, Christian Today.
“The day is getting closer when everyone has access to God’s word in their own language, thanks to the amazing momentum in the work of Bible translation that has continued in the past 12 months,” Wycliffe Bible Translators has said.
The complete Bible is now available in more than 800 languages worldwide after another year of rapid progress in Bible translation, according to new figures from the Bible translation ministry.
Twenty-eight complete Bibles were launched over the past year – equalling the highest number recorded in a single year – while 70 New Testaments were also completed.
Together, the 98 launches amount to more than one new Bible or New Testament every four days.
The figures are contained in Wycliffe Bible Translators’ latest State of the Bible report, released to coincide with United Nations’ International Translation Day on September 30.
One of this year’s launches took the number of languages with a complete Bible past the 800 mark.
The total now stands at 807, in languages spoken by around 6.2 billion people, although not all those people will have access to the whole Bible in their own language for political, geographical, financial or other reasons.
Wycliffe said around 101 million people were now able to access an entire Bible in their language for the first time, and 29 million a New Testament.
Another 87 language communities received Scripture portions or Bible stories where none had previously been available.
Despite the progress, 20 per cent of people worldwide still do not have the complete Bible in their native language, and Wycliffe said it is “chasing zero”.
The number of languages where translation is considered necessary but work has yet to begin has fallen to 543, excluding languages deemed to have insufficient vitality to support translation. Five years ago, that figure stood close to 1,900.