The entire Bible was published in Thai in 1894 and there are currently several translations of the Bible in the Thai language.
The entire Bible was published in Thai in 1894 and there are currently several translations of the Bible in the Thai language.
Thai translations of the Bible currently in print include the Thai Standard Version (THSV 2011), the Thai New Contemporary Version (NTCV), the Thai King James Version (TKJV), the New Thai Translation Version, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT), and the Easy-to-Read Thai Bible (ERV). A Catholic Thai translation of the Bible including Apocrypha is available from Thai Catholic booksellers.
| Translation | John 3:16 |
|---|---|
| THSV 2011 | พระเจ้าทรงรักโลกดังนี้ คือได้ประทานพระบุตรองค์เดียวของพระองค์ เพื่อทุกคนที่วางใจในพระบุตรนั้นจะไม่พินาศ แต่มีชีวิตนิรันดร์ |
| THSV 1971 | เพราะว่าพระเจ้าทรงรักโลก จนได้ทรงประทานพระบุตรองค์เดียวของพระองค์ เพื่อทุกคนที่วางใจในพระบุตรนั้นจะไม่พินาศ แต่มีชีวิตนิรันดร์ |
| TNCV | เพราะว่าพระเจ้าทรงรักโลกจนได้ประทานพระบุตรองค์เดียวของพระองค์ เพื่อทุกคนที่เชื่อในพระบุตรนั้นจะไม่พินาศแต่มีชีวิตนิรันดร์ |
| TKJV | เพราะว่าพระเจ้าทรงรักโลก จนได้ทรงประทานพระบุตรองค์เดียวของพระองค์ที่บังเกิดมา เพื่อผู้ใดที่เชื่อในพระบุตรนั้นจะไม่พินาศ แต่มีชีวิตนิรันดร์ |
| ERV | เพราะว่าพระเจ้ารักผูกพันกับมนุษย์ในโลกนี้มาก จนถึงขนาดยอมสละพระบุตรเพียงองค์เดียวของพระองค์ เพื่อว่าทุกคนที่ไว้วางใจในพระบุตรนั้นจะไม่สูญสิ้น แต่จะมีชีวิตกับพระเจ้าตลอดไป |
| NWT 2015 | พระเจ้ารักโลกมาก จนถึงกับยอมสละลูกคนเดียวของพระองค์ เพื่อทุกคนที่แสดงความเชื่อในท่านจะไม่ถูกทำลาย แต่จะมีชีวิตตลอดไป |
The earliest known attempt at a translation of the Bible into Thai is a free translation of the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, starting at verse 5. This was translated in 1685 by Louis Laneau of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. [1]
The first Protestant effort at Thai Bible translation was a translation of the Gospel of Matthew by Ann Judson. [2] Karl Gützlaff and Jacob Tomlin, who are regarded as the first two resident Protestant missionaries in Thailand, translated the four Gospels and Romans from Chinese into Thai. They were assisted by a Chinese man and a Burmese man, both of whom spoke Thai. [3] John Taylor Jones, an ABMU missionary, translated the New Testament from Greek into the Thai language. Part of the Bible in Thai was first published in 1834. Jones' translation of the New Testament in Thai was printed for the first time in 1846. [4] The translation of the Old Testament was finished in 1883 and the Bible with the complete Protestant canon in Thai was published as a single volume for the first time in 1894. This edition of the Bible was later revised by the Thailand Bible Society using the King James Version (KJV) as the base text and published as the Thai Standard Version in 1940. This translation was subsequently revised using the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and Authorized Standard Version (ASV) as the base text and republished in 1971. [5] The Thai Easy-to-Read Version was described by its editor, Tanapon Saowatarnpong, as "Easy to ready is hard to write." [6] It has made the text easier to read by reducing citations from the archaic honorific system, using honor/shame vocabulary, and reducing "insider" Christian vocabulary.
Jehovah's Witnesses released the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures for the first time in Thai by 2007. [7] This Christian Greek Scriptures is based from the English 1984 edition of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures which was released in 1984 in United States. [8] Few years later, in 2015, a complete Bible with Hebrew Scriptures and revised Christian Greek Scriptures was released in Thai with a new name called: คัมภีร์ไบเบิลฉบับแปลโลกใหม่ (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures). The Bible is based from the English 2013 revision of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures which was released in 2013 in Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.A. [9] This newly revised edition includes the use of more modern and understandable language (comparison above), clarified Biblical expression, appendixes, and many more. [10]
In addition to the Thai Bible, several other language Bible translations are used in Thailand, especially among ethnic minorities. These include Chinese, Lao, Burmese, Cambodian, Malay, Karen, Akha, Hmong, Lahu, Lawa, and Shan.
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) 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 September 2023 all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.
Since the arrival of Christianity in China, the Bible has been translated into many varieties of the Chinese language, both in fragments and in its totality. The first translations may have been undertaken as early as the 7th century AD, but the first printed translations appeared only in the nineteenth century. Progress on a modern translation was encumbered by denominational rivalries, theological clashes, linguistic disputes, and practical challenges at least until the publication of the Protestant Chinese Union Version in 1919, which became the basis of standard versions in use today.
Protestants in Thailand constitute about 0.77% of the population of Thailand. Protestant work among the Thai people was begun by Ann Judson in Burma, who evangelized Thai war captives who were relocated to Burma. Protestantism was introduced to the country of Thailand in 1828 through the work of Karl Gutzlaff and Jacob Tomlin, the first two resident Protestant missionaries in Thailand.
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.
There are two main translations of the Bible into Japanese widely in use today — the Japanese New Interconfessional Translation Bible (新共同訳聖書) and the New Revised Bible (新改訳聖書). The New Japanese Bible, published by the Organization for the New Japanese Bible Translation (新日本聖書刊行会) and distributed by Inochinokotoba-sha, aims to be a literal translation using modern Japanese, while the New Interconfessional Version, published by the Japan Bible Society, aims to be ecumenically used by all Christian denominations and must therefore conform to various theologies. Protestant Evangelicals most often use the New Japanese Bible, but the New Interconfessional Version is the most widely distributed and the one used by the Catholic Church, the United Church of Christ, Lutheran Church factions and many Anglicans in Japan.
Bible translations into French date back to the Medieval era. After a number of French Bible translations in the Middle Ages, the first printed translation of the Bible into French was the work of the French theologian Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in 1530 in Antwerp. This was substantially revised and improved in 1535 by Pierre Robert Olivétan. This Bible, in turn, became the basis of the first French Catholic Bible, published at Leuven in 1550, the work of Nicholas de Leuze and François de Larben. Finally, the Bible de Port-Royal, prepared by Antoine Lemaistre and his brother Louis Isaac Lemaistre, finished in 1695, achieved broad acceptance among both Catholics and Protestants. Jean-Frédéric Ostervald's version (1744) also enjoyed widespread popularity.
The Bible has been translated into Italian many times since the first printed translation, the so-called Malermi Bible, by Nicolò Malermi in 1471. The CEI Bible published by the Episcopal Conference of Italy is the official version of the Italian Catholic Church. Prior to the initial publication of the CEI edition in 1971, the most common Italian translation of the bible was that of Archbishop Antonio Martini, published from 1769 to 1781. The 1607 Italian translation by Giovanni Diodati is the standard reference used in Italian Protestantism; a revised edition of this translation in modern Italian, Nuova Diodati, was published in 1991.
Until the 1990s, most Korean Bible translations used old-fashioned, antiquated language. This made it difficult for Christians that preferred colloquial terms to comprehend what the Bible said. By the 1990s, more colloquial and contemporary versions of the Korean Bible translations came about for Christians, which made it easier for them to comprehend and understand the words from the Bible in a more precise way.
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 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 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.
The history of Bible translations into the Tamil language commences with the arrival of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg at Tranquebar in 1706.Johann Philipp Fabricius, a German, revised Ziegenbalg's and others work to produce the standard Tamil version. Seventy years after Fabricius, at the invitation of Peter Percival a Saiva scholar, Arumuka Navalar, produced a "tentative" translation, which is known as the "Navalar version," and was largely rejected by Tamil Protestants.
The first attempt to translate Bible into Kannada was by the Serampore missionaries and they appear to have it completed by 1809. However this manuscript was lost in the 1812 fire at the Serampore press.
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 Konknni 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.
The Bible has been translated into multiple Philippine languages, including Filipino language, based on the Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.
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.
