Latest News #273
March 4, 2004

SCRIPTURE LANGUAGE REPORT 2003

Translating the Bible:
is the news good or bad?

A young girl at the dedication on November 23, 2003, of the Cakchiquel Bible, by the Rev Cornelio Midence Rodriguez, Executive Secretary of the Bible Society of Guatemala. Patzicía, Guatemala. Photo: Central America RSC/Ronald Ross (GUA04DJ-7.JPG)

READING, England — Deciding whether or not progress in translating the Bible into the languages of the world is currently healthy is difficult.

People in the world at large are frequently astonished if they stumble on the discovery that the business of translating the Bible is still in hand. For perhaps without having given the matter very much thought, most of them – in the Western world, at any rate, and, one suspects, much more widely – will assume that the task of translating the Bible into all the world's living languages was completed long ago.

They will therefore be surprised to learn that, of the 6,500 or more languages spoken in the world (and that figure by itself may well surprise them), those in which the Bible can be read in its entirety number no more than 414. This, representing an advance of nine over the previous year, is the headline figure from the Scripture Language Report (SLR), published this week by the United Bible Societies (UBS). This annual report records every new Scripture translation – of the complete Bible or a part of it – added to the two Bible Society deposit libraries during the past 12 months.

The other eagerly awaited figure from the SLR concerns translations of the New Testament. In that category the latest figures are up on the previous year by 42.

The reason for ambivalence about the state of Bible translation is that there is more than one way to look at it. Figures concerning the number of languages alone do not adequately convey the whole story. To mark the arrival of the third millennium, UBS launched a special website all about the state of Bible translation. According to this site, The Word 2000 "There are now over 2,000 languages in which at least one book of the Bible has been published. Although this figure represents less than half of the languages and dialects presently in use in the world, it nonetheless includes the primary vehicles of communication of well over 90 per cent of the world's population" (Italics added).

In other words, although the number of languages in which whole or partial translation of the Bible has been accomplished may be small, the number of people to whom they give access to Scripture is vast.

But in case translators are in danger of feeling that the end is now in view, another website, that of Wycliffe Bible Translators, sums up the challenge that remains: "Three hundred and eighty million people in over 3,000 language groups still wait for the Good News in their own languages. They have waited long enough!" it declares.

If these aspects of the same overall picture leave the onlooker confused, one thing is sure: the process of translating the Bible is a slow, painstaking work of love.

First there is the need for prospective translators to be identified and trained; once the work is in hand, there is the question of checking, amending and revising their work and gauging reaction to it among the churches – all of which procedures are described in World Report from time to time.

In some cases translators have to devise ways to convey concepts for which the target language has no direct equivalent. In others, a written form of the language has to be constructed, in effect, before the translation can proceed.

In addition to the normal 'delays' inherent in the process itself, the business of translating is prone to many other impediments like war, death and natural disaster. These harrowing obstacles, too, surface from time to time in the accounts of translation in World Report.

An interesting example of how a particular group of translators persevered to triumph, finishing their work in the face of pressure from a different direction, came to light following the dedication of a new translation in Guatemala last November.

The story was unlike the others in so far as the translators were women and the pressure domestic.

A woman runs a food stall at the dedication on November 23, 2003, of the Cakchiquel Bible, by the Rev Cornelio Midence Rodriguez, Executive Secretary of the Bible Society of Guatemala. Patzicía, Guatemala. Photo: Central America RSC/Ronald Ross (GUA04DJ-3.JPG)

In 1993 in eastern Guatemala four Mayan women of humble origin began translating the Bible into their first language, Cakchiquel. Their participation in the project meant an enormous upheaval for them and their families: Mayan society normally depends exclusively on the women to look after children and wash the clothes, not to mention making corn into flour which they then bake into tortillas three or four times a day. (Mayan men, it seems, do not relish warmed-up tortillas.)

"[The women's participation] was definitely not part of the Mayan scheme of things," wrote UBS's Ron Ross in an article in World Report 384. It tested the understanding and commitment of their husbands, and the willingness of their mothers-in-law to care for small grandchildren… It would also test the mettle of the women themselves.

"At times the going was tough," he added. "Often, family pressures were enormous and the endless days exhausting. And the project was to last 10 long years."

It was not the women who gave up on the project, however. At the beginning there were men in the translation team, but as the tedium of long-term translation work began to set in, it was they who began to drift away until, finally, only one remained. In Ron Ross's words, "It was the women who bore the lion's share of the burden and who stayed the course until the project was completed."

In November 2003 they had the satisfaction of seeing the Bible they had lovingly translated being dedicated by the Rev Cornelio Midence Rodríguez, Executive Secretary of the Bible Society of Guatemala. And the Cakchiquel Bible is listed in the section of the Scripture Language Report 2003 headed 'Complete Bibles reported for the first time'.

Stories like this, when they can be found and told, serve to show that the new statistics, valuable though they are for reference purposes, remain, as ever, just a part of a richer, more complex story.

There is an interesting historical sidelight to the story of the Cakchiquel Bible. From 1917 to 1932, Dr Cameron Townsend, who was to become co-founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT), sold Bibles in Spanish to the Mayan people in Guatemala . One day one of them challenged him saying, "If your God is so great, why can't he speak my language?" It was as a result of that challenge that Dr Townsend set about translating the New Testament into Cakchiquel. The first full draft of his translation was completed in 1929 and it was dedicated and published in 1931.