Home

Bible Translation in the New Millennium: The Changed and Changing Context

2. Scriptures of the world. The annual statistics compiled by the United Bible Societies (UBS)³ give the following picture:

In terms of population, at least a portion of the Bible exists in languages spoken by ninety-five percent of the world’s population. Around 300 million people, or four thousand languages, still have no scripture in their language. At the same time we must remember that the existence of scripture in a language does not mean that the ninety-five percent have actually received, heard or read scripture in their own language. In addition, over two billion people in the world today are illiterate; this is one-third of the world’s population.

Some Features of Bible Translation: 1950-2005
Bible translation has a rich history; however, all that has taken place since the middle of the twentieth century has yet to be fully documented. In that time there has been an explosion of Bible translation. From1950 to 2005 new translations have been made available in 1,196 additional languages.

1. Eugene Nida and Kenneth Pike. The history of this period cannot be written without reference to two pioneers of translation theory: Eugene Nida and Kenneth Pike. Following World War II, both applied the tools of the new sciences of linguistics and anthropology to the challenge of making the Bible available in languages around the world. In developing their approaches to translation they became the theoreticians of the UBS and the twin organisations of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT).

In the 1950s and 1960s translation theory was in its infancy, and Bible translation was at the cutting edge of that new discipline. The emphasis was on meaning-based translation. This approach became known as “dynamic equivalence” and, later, as “functional equivalence.”

2. Post-war missionary generation. In the aftermath of World War II there was a surge in the evangelical missionary movement, especially from North America⁵, as well as a new missionary thrust on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. In the Americas a significant number of these new missionaries focused attention on indigenous peoples. Bible translation was a core concern. Pike’s tools for linguistic analysis and Nida’s theory and practice of translation provided the keys to advance in this area.

3. Shift from missionary translators to mother-tongue translators. From the mid-1970s onward the growth of the Church, the increase in training facilities and the changing missiological emphasis produced the shift from expatriate translators to mother-tongue translators in indigenous language projects. Bible translation had thus moved to a third stage.

4. Interconfessional developments. The promulgation of the Dei Verbum document in 1965 following the II Vatican Council marked a fundamental change in the use of vernacular languages in the Roman Catholic Church. This produced a commitment to Bible translation and to work such as El Libro de la Nueva Alianza (1968), the NT translated by Fr. Armando Levoratti and Fr. Alfredo Trusso in Buenos Aires. In 1969, the “Guidelines for Interconfessional Cooperation in Translating the Bible” was published by the United Bible Societies and the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity of the Roman Catholic Church.