While celebrating 75 years of Bible translation to language people across the globe know best, Wycliffe Bible Translators revealed on Sunday that their work is not yet done owing to the fact that there are still an estimated 1,800 languages that likely need Bible translation to begin. This figure does not include sign languages.
Wycliffe Bible Translators also revealed that more than 550 languages have the complete Bible, with an additional 2,400 that have either the New Testament or different books.
“But the work is not yet done,” the organisation said.
To commemorate their milestone, Wycliffe released a book titled Till All Have Heard, which tells the history of the organization and the work God has helped them accomplish.
Wycliffe was founded by William Cameron Townsend, whom Frieze endearingly refers to as “Uncle Cam.”
Although some of their work has been heavily criticized, Wycliffe Bible Translators state that they are using state of the art technology and are being equipped to do quality work as they are assisted by the linguistic, translation and literacy expertise of Wycliffe members.
The Ethnologue catalogue of world languages, which is one of the best linguistic resources, currently lists 6909 living languages. About 6% of them have more than a million speakers each, and collectively account for 94% of the world population.
By Paul Dennis Wasswa.
