Bible to be translated for 99.9% of the world’s population by 2033

Simon Peter Mukhama, General Secretary and CEO of the Bible Society of Uganda. Courtesy Photo. The Bible app YouVersion is on a mission: to get the Bible into the...

Simon Peter Mukhama, General Secretary and CEO of the Bible Society of Uganda. Courtesy Photo.

The Bible app YouVersion is on a mission: to get the Bible into the hands of every person on earth. And they are making good progress, this website has learnt.

Earlier this year, the organization asked well wishers to get involved in the ‘Bible For Everyone’ challenge that sought to translate the Bible for a billion people.

YouVersion issued a statement saying the world’s bible translators set a shared goal: by 2033, their plan is to have at least the New Testament translated for 99.9% of the world’s population.

“…before people can pray to the Lord for help, they must believe in him. And before they can believe in the Lord, they must hear about him,” they said in part.

“Although many languages have at least a few Bible verses (some up to a chapter or two), many have no Scripture at all. It used to take decades to translate the Bible into a new language. But progressive translation ministries have been working together to develop more efficient processes and better take advantage of available technologies, resulting in drastic reductions — in many cases down to just a few years,” they stated.

For the whole of this year, YouVersion has been working with Bible translation partners to identify high-impact projects that translators could complete quickly with just a little more funding,” they added.

The recent statistics by Christian Missions organisation, Wycliffe Bible Translators show that for the first time ever, the number of languages with a Bible translation outnumber those without. This accounts for an estimated 5.4 billion around the world, while the remaining 1,967 languages, many of them dialects with minor variations from larger groups, are spoken by an estimated 209 million people.

editor@ugchristiannews.com

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