According to United Bible Society, 5.9 billion people can now read the Word of God in the 733 languages in which the Bible is currently available. The UBS recently reported that 57 translations of the Bible or parts of it, were finished in 2022, which is a record number of new translations in one year. While the New Testament is translated into 1,622 languages; other parts of the Bible in 1,255 languages, and around 3,776 languages do not have a translation of the Scriptures yet.
Of those, 14 were of the complete Bible, are in Nigerian or Ethiopian languages; 5 of the New Testament and 38 of parts of the Bible.
That figure allowed 100 million people to have and read some scripture in their language for the first time, and now 7.2 billion people have that chance.
Furthermore, the UBS replaced older translations for 623 million people with 25 different languages and finished several other translation projects.
Bible Translation Roadmap
“Bible translation must remain the key task of the UBS and requires special effort, focus and sustainable resourcing”, said Alexander Schweitzer, of the Strategic Leadership Team of UBS, in an interview with the Bible Society for the Netherlands and Flanders.
That is why they created the Bible Translation Roadmap in 2018, which aims to finish 1,200 translations of the Bible, which can be read by about 600 million people by 2038.
“God’s Word should be made available in a shape and form which bridges the gap between the original setting of the Biblical texts and today’s cultures, societies and languages. Nothing speaks more to the heart than the heart language. Revisions of existing translations do that too”, stressed Schweitzer.
He plans to finish 200 translations of the bible by the end of this year, while 300 will still be under translation.
