In October Wycliffe Bible Translators released its annual figures on the progress being made in Bible translation worldwide.
698 languages now have the complete Bible (up from 683 in 2018), and 1,548 languages have a complete New Testament (up from 1,534). A further 1,138 have some translated portions of the Bible (up from 1,133).
Encouragingly, there is also active translation or preparatory work going on in 2,617 languages in 161 countries. Wycliffe and its partner organisation SIL are involved in about three-quarters of this work. Since 1996, the number of languages in which there is a complete Bible has doubled.
Reflecting on the past year, James Poole, Executive Director of Wycliffe, said: ‘Yet again, we have seen that when people get their New Testament or Bible in their language, it makes such a difference. Seeing the joy and excitement at the dedications of the Keliko, Wamey and Nyakyusa New Testaments in this past 12 months reminds me how much it means to people to have the Scriptures in their language. As people read the word of God with full understanding, so they are transformed in a far deeper way.’
According to the data, the number of active languages (including sign languages) in the world stands at 7,353. Although there are 3,384 languages with some portions of the Bible, there are 3,969 (covering 252 million people) with not even a single verse.
‘As the statistics show, there is still much work to do,’ continued Poole. ‘Nearly 1.5 billion people do not have the Bible in the language they understand best: that’s one in five of the world’s population. That’s why Wycliffe continues to work with urgency to translate God’s word into all these languages.’
