List of Bible translations by language

Last updated

A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England Bible.malmesbury.arp.jpg
A Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England

The Bible is the most translated book in the world, with more translations (including an increasing number of sign languages) being produced annually.

Contents

According to Wycliffe Bible Translators, on 1 August 2025, speakers of 4,007 languages (out of a total of 7,396 known languages) had access to at least a book of the Bible, including 1,433 languages with a portion available (chapters or whole books of the Bible), 1,798 languages with access to the New Testament in their native language, and 776 having the full Bible. [1] It is estimated by Wycliffe Bible Translators that translation may be required in 544 languages where no work is currently known to be in progress. They also estimate that there are currently around 4,457 languages in at least 173 countries which have active Bible translation projects (with or without some portion already published). [1] [2]

The rate of growth of translation has increased rapidly across the 20th and into the 21st century. In 1900, there were only 510 languages with any portion of the Bible available. By 2000, this had reached 2600 languages. [3] It is estimated that around the year 2033, every language will have access to at least some of the Bible. [4]

Geographically

Alphabetically

Translation efforts and organisations

Many Bibles have been translated and published with the aid of a global fellowship of around 150 Bible Societies which collectively form The United Bible Societies. The other largest contributor is Wycliffe Bible Translators and other members of the Wycliffe Global Alliance, but there are many other churches and organisations involved. The Digital Bible Library lists over 240 different contributors. [7]

In the early 1500s, like-minded Catholic bishops sponsored leading humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam's wish to improve the Vulgate, return to newly available Greek sources, enable reliable vernacular translations, and provide a devotional alternative to ceremonial religion, with his project make a new Latin/Greek edition of the New Testament, with substantial philological annotations. This effort was successful, and immediately stimulated vernacular translations, notably Luther's Bible which was subsequently re-translated into other Germanic languages.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "2025 Global Scripture Access". Wycliffe Global Alliance. Retrieved 2025-09-03.
  2. ↑ "2024 Global Scripture Access". Wycliffe. 1 September 2024. Retrieved 22 Dec 2024.
  3. ↑ "Data - ProgressBible". progress.bible. Retrieved 2025-09-03.
  4. ↑ "illumiNations - Reaching The Nations". illumiNations. Retrieved 2025-09-03.
  5. ↑ A Bìbbia corsa
  6. ↑ 9937101646
  7. ↑ The Digital Bible Library (Aug 20, 2024). "Live Statistics of DBL Content". thedigitalbiblelibrary.org/. Retrieved 2024-12-22.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.