Translation project criteria

The United Bible Societies does not have a global policy about size of population required for a translation. However, at its 1996 World Assembly, the UBS Fellowship did set itself a goal that by 2010 an easily understood Bible should be available for every language with more than 500,000 speakers, a New Testament for every language with more than 250,000 speakers, and a Bible Portion for every language with more than 100,000 speakers.

In actual practice, it is the local Bible Society that determines where to put its resources in serving the churches of the nation. Therefore, a rule of thumb has often been to see a possible distribution of at least 500 New Testaments and at least 2,000 Bibles before resources are committed to a New Testament or Bible translation project.