Find out more about the work of Bible translation through browsing our frequently asked questions

When people have the Bible in their languages, churches grow and people come to know Jesus, and believers grow in faith.

The Bible is essential for evangelism, discipleship, and church growth. Jesus told his followers to take the gospel to all the world, but there are still hundreds of language groups which don’t have access to God’s word in their own language.

History shows that there has never been a strong local church without the translated Bible being used by local leaders. 

Other mission agencies depend on the foundational work of Bible translation in order to do their work. Indeed, it was other mission agencies that came together almost 70 years ago to found Wycliffe in order to address this fundamental need in world mission.

Wycliffe and our partner organisations are involved in over three-quarters of Bible translation work around the world.

A quote from American historian Mark A Noll in his book Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity is a great way to sum up the immense impact Bible translation is having:

‘If it were necessary to find a single turning point symbolising the movement of Christianity from the North to the South, a good candidate might be the founding of Wycliffe Bible Translators… This organisation has been the most visible promoter of Bible translation in the twentieth century. The translation of the Scriptures, in turn, may be the most enduringly significant feature of the global expansion of Christianity.’

Unfortunately, no, the urgent work of Bible translation has not yet been completed. Currently over 1 in 5 people worldwide – that is over 1.5 billion people – still do not have the Bible in the language they know best.

While huge progress is being made, much work and investment is needed to ensure that all people can know Jesus through the Bible in their language.

But excitingly, more Bible translation work is in progress now than ever before – all because of the giving and praying of people like you. 

If this momentum can be maintained and accelerated through increased investment, then the time is in sight when all people will have access to the Bible in their language. So this is a very important time in the history of Bible translation around the world.

Huge progress has been made, thanks to the giving and praying of people like you.

There are currently 7,396 languages in use worldwide.

759 have the complete Bible 

1,754 have the New Testament 

1,283 have portions of Scripture

This means 6.0 billion people have access to the whole Bible in their own language, a further 856 million people can access the New Testament, and 462 million can access portions and stories. 

There is also work in progress happening in 4,082 languages. As a result, many thousands of people’s lives have been changed, and many local churches have developed and grown. The language work Wycliffe has been involved in has also contributed to ongoing literacy programmes.

*All statistics, ProgressBible Snapshot (November 2024)

1 in 5 people, speaking 6,637 languages, do not have the whole Bible in their first language.

There are 2,045 languages that have no Scripture and no work in progress at the moment. Of these, 889 languages (spoken by 27.0 million people) are considered vital enough for communities to sustain and benefit from translation work.

Much of the work that remains to be done is in places that are hostile to the gospel. But excitingly, more Bible translation work is in progress now than ever before – all because of the giving and praying of people like you. 

If this momentum can be maintained and accelerated through increased investment, then the time is in sight when all people will have access to the Bible in their language. So this is a very important time in the history of Bible translation around the world.

*All statistics, ProgressBible Snapshot (November 2024)

More Bible translation work is now in progress now than ever before – all because of the giving and praying of people like you.

4,082 languages have begun active translation or preparatory work. Wycliffe and other partner organisations are involved in over three-quarters of this work.

If this momentum can be maintained and accelerated through increased investment, then the time is in sight when all people will have access to the Bible in their language.

*All statistics, ProgressBible Snapshot (November 2024)

We believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. We take very great care to ensure that Bible translations are faithful to the original languages. 

We are committed to Bible translations which communicate the original meaning in full, without distortion.

Wycliffe adheres to internationally agreed standards for Bible translation. We are a member of the Forum of Bible Agencies International (FOBAI) and abide by the FOBAI translation standards and the translation standards of the World Evangelical Alliance.

The purpose of translating the Bible is so people can be transformed by coming to know God through his word. A translation must be faithful, and it should also be usable!

A good Bible translation will be:

Accurate

Accuracy is the most important quality of a good translation. An accurate translation is one that conveys the same meaning as the original, or gets as close as possible to communicating the original meaning. Finding exact equivalents for specific words or biblical ideas across different languages is often very challenging, especially where the biblical idea (eg forgiveness) is unknown in the receptor language culture. Yet, difficult as it may be, the translator strives to find the closest equivalent possible to convey the same meaning.

Clear

A good translation will make the meaning as clear as possible and will be easy to understand. It will not be confusing or ambiguous. We don’t want people to read the translation and wonder what it means.  

Natural

A good translation will reflect the natural usage of the local language, so it will not sound like it was translated by someone who doesn’t know the language. Every language has natural patterns that make it sound beautiful. An unnatural translation will sound stilted and be hard to understand so people will not enjoy reading it. But readers will enjoy using a natural translation and will readily understand the meaning. That’s why it’s so important for local people to take the lead in translating the Bible into their own languages wherever possible.

Accessible

The Bible is translated so that people will use it and be transformed by it. We don’t want it to sit on a shelf. An accessible translation will be delivered in the right format, with the right script and appearance, so that people will engage with it.

The Bible is a long, complex book written in a different time and culture, and producing an accurate translation in another language is a tall order not to be taken lightly! For this reason, a full Bible translation takes time to do well.

Before even starting on translation, foundations need to be laid. Bible translation teams need to raise local awareness and support, find and train the right people to be translators, and in many cases, create and test a written form of the language. Building a foundation of local involvement and ownership, as well as developing a written form of the language in partnership with the people group, is vital. Without this preparatory work, a translation can end up gathering dust on a shelf, or even be rejected completely.

Once the team has started translation work, they proceed through the stages of drafting and checking, redrafting and rechecking, for each of the 66 books of the Bible.

The aim of Bible translation is that the word of God gets into people’s lives and hearts. That means the work does not end with translation. The work of equipping people to use the Bible in their language happens alongside translation work, and continues after the translation is complete and launched.

People working with Wycliffe are engaged in developing cutting-edge technology. From software that enables translators to work more efficiently, to apps that enable people to listen to and read the translated Bible, to designing fonts so languages can be written and read on screens, to new developments in AI, this technology helps translation teams to accelerate the process of translation and enables more people to engage with the completed translations.

Specific translation software that enables translation teams to compare their draft translation alongside the original languages, and also with translations in other languages, plays a huge role in helping translators produce accurate and clear translations more quickly. 

Wycliffe people have also been central in developing Bible apps that translation teams around the world can use. These apps have the written text of the Bible along with the audio recording. The written text is highlighted as it is being read, which also helps in developing people’s literacy skills.

Wycliffe people are also developing cutting-edge fonts technology so that more people can write in their languages – especially ones that have just been written down for the first time – on computers and other screens. A number of these fonts are added to the open-source Google fonts library, which means that they make a huge difference beyond Bible translation in the lives of people speaking those languages. You can read more about this work here.

Wycliffe also has people working on developing AI tools to assist the Bible translation process.

Sometimes people ask why we don’t use Google Translate. Google Translate only supports around 100 of the world’s over 7,000 languages, and works by searching for word patterns in large banks of documents. For many of the languages we are involved with, these banks of data don’t exist, as the language has never been written down before. Even where written documents do exist, Google Translate isn’t complex enough to do an accurate translation of the Bible. While technology is always improving, computer programs continue to struggle with complex grammar structures and words that have more than one sense or meaning, and can tend to produce somewhat robotic-sounding texts.

It’s all about teamwork! There are many different roles and areas of expertise. 

Surveyors carry out initial research to establish translation needs. Working alongside local people, work is done where needed to develop an alphabet, analyse the grammar, produce primers and teach people to read. Literacy specialists help to train others in order to establish ongoing literacy programmes and encourage widespread use of the language in written form. 

Linguists/translators support the translation work and pass on their skills to local people. Other people specialise in encouraging Bible use. We also need support workers such as secretaries, teachers, accountants, computer technicians and programmers, mechanics, pilots, printers, media personnel and many others. The likelihood is that with your gifts and professional skills you could be a valuable part of the Bible translation team. Explore more about joining Wycliffe here.

We serve local churches and Christians; they are doing their own translations with our support; they make the main decisions about what they need. The choice of Greek and Hebrew texts is ultimately up to them; they might occasionally select versions such as Majority Text; but almost always they choose to use the same standard Hebrew (Masoretic) and Greek (UBS/NA) texts used in most modern English translations. The debate over texts reflects the luxury of having a choice of Bible translations available to us in English, whereas for the people Wycliffe serves having a first translation (using whichever source texts) conveys the word of God far more accurately and faithfully than a Bible in a colonial language that people can’t understand.