Related Research Articles
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of November 2024 the whole Bible has been translated into 756 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,726 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,274 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,756 languages.
More than 100 complete translations into English languages have been produced. Translations of Biblical books, especially passages read in the Liturgy can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English.
The Ilocano Bible, published in 1909, is the second Bible to be published in any Philippine language, after the Tagalog which was published in 1905.
Sacred Name Bibles are Bible translations that consistently use Hebraic forms of the God of Israel's personal name, instead of its English language translation, in both the Old and New Testaments. Some Bible versions, such as the Jerusalem Bible, employ the name Yahweh, a transliteration of the Hebrew tetragrammaton (YHWH), in the English text of the Old Testament, where traditional English versions have LORD.
Work on translation of the Bible into the Kazakh language began with the work of Charles Fraser of the Scottish Missionary Society. Fraser's translation of Matthew was published in 1818, and the New Testament in 1820 by the Russian Bible Society. J. M. E. Gottwald, a professor at Kazan University, revised it, and this was published in 1880 by the British and Foreign Bible Society in Kazan, and it was republished in 1887, and 1910. George W. Hunter, of the China Inland Mission in Ürümqi, considered this translation to be "a good translation, into Astrahan-Turki", he does not seem to have considered it to be Kazakh. Darlow and Moule say that it was intended for Kyrgyz in the neighbourhood of Orenburg, and the language was sometimes called "Orenburg Tatar". According to Rev. W. Nicholson of the Royal Asiatic Society in St Petersburg this translation was intended for "The Kirghese hordes—Great, Little, and Middle, as they are called—[who] occupy various regions in Southern Siberia, Central Asia, and west of the Caspian Sea." George A. King says Fraser's translation was into the language of the "Western Kirghiz or Kirghiz-Kazak, though they disown the name Kirghiz".
Bible translations into Persian Languages have been made since the fourth or fifth century, although few early manuscripts survive. There are both Jewish and Christian translations from the Middle Ages. Complete translations of the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament from original languages were first made in the 19th century by Protestant missionaries.
The earliest known Christian texts in Old Uyghur are known from manuscript fragments uncovered in the Turfan oasis. There are approximately fifty fragments written in Old Uyghur. An early Uyghur translation of the New Testament and the Psalms may have been done in the 14th century by Giovanni da Montecorvino, papal envoy to the Mongols who became Roman Catholic archbishop of Khanbaliq in 1307.
Part of the Bible was first available in the Kurdish language in 1856. Modern translations of the whole Bible are available in standard Kurmanji and Sorani, with many portions in other dialects.
The modern Vietnamese alphabet chữ Quốc ngữ was created by Portuguese and Italian Jesuit missionaries and institutionalized by Alexandre de Rhodes with the first printing of Catholic texts in Vietnamese in 1651, but not the Bible. Some New Testament extracts were translated and printed in catechisms in Thailand in 1872.
Translation of the Bible into Malayalam began in 1806. Church historians say Kayamkulam Philipose Ramban, a scholar from Kayamkulam, translated the Bible from Syriac into Malayalam in 1811 to help the faithful get a better understanding of the scripture. The Manjummal translation is the first Catholic version of the Bible in Malayalam. This is the direct translation from Latin. The four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles were translated by the inmates of the Manjummal Ashram, Fr. Aloysius, Fr. Michael and Fr. Polycarp. The Pancha Granthy came out from Mannanam under the leadership of Nidhirikkal Mani Kathanar in 1924. The Catholic New Testament was published in full in 1940, and has influenced development of the modern language.
The modern Hindi and Urdu standards are highly mutually intelligible in colloquial form, but use different scripts when written, and have lesser mutually intelligibility in literary forms. The history of Bible translations into Hindi and Urdu is closely linked, with the early translators of the Hindustani language simply producing the same version with different scripts: Devanagari and Nastaliq, as well as Roman.
Bible translations into Croatian started to appear in fragments in the 14th century. Efforts to make a complete translation started in the 16th century. The first published complete translations were made in the 19th century.
Biblical translations into the indigenous languages of North and South America have been produced since the 16th century.
Languages spoken in the Indian Subcontinent belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 75% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 20% of Indians. Other languages belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates. India has the world's second-highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (839). The first known translation of any Christian Scripture in an Indian language was done to Konkani in 1667 AD by Ignazio Arcamone, an Italian Jesuit.
Bible translations into the languages of Indonesia and Malaysia have a lot of common history up until the modern era. Apart from the shared Malay language which historically was the lingua franca of the Malay Archipelago and forms the basis for the national languages of Indonesia and Malaysia today, portions of the Bible have been translated into a variety of indigenous languages in the region.
Traditionally Russia used the Old Church Slavonic language and Slavonic Bible, and in the modern era Bible translations into Russian. The minority languages of Russia usually have a much more recent history, many of them having been commissioned or updated by the Institute for Bible Translation.
A translation of the Gospel of Matthew was made into Turkmen, by James Bassett (missionary). This was published in 1880. He revised it in 1884 and these were published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Currently there are three translations of the Bible into modern Kyrgyz.
The Bible has been translated into the Nepali language several times. Beginning in 1821 with the first New Testament translation, these were historically translated and published in India. More recently, translations like the Nepali New Revised Version in 1997 have been translated and published in Nepal. Other recent versions like the Trinitarian Bible Society edition continue to be made in India specifically in the dialect of Nepali spoken in India.
References
- ↑ "World Scriptures - Uzbek" . Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ↑ "About the Bible Society of Uzbekistan".