The United Bible Societies (UBS) recently reported that 57 translations of the Bible or parts of it, were finished in 2022, which is a record number of new translations in one year.

Of those, 14 were of the complete Bible, as in Nigerian or Ethiopian; 5 of the New Testament and 38 of parts of the Bible.

That figure allowed 100 million people to have and read some scripture in their own language for the first time, and now 7.2 billion people have that chance.

According to UBS, 5.9 billion people can read the Word of God in the 733 languages in which the Bible is currently available, while the New Testament is translated into 1,622 languages; other parts of the Bible in 1,255 languages, and around 3,776 languages do not have a translation of the Scriptures yet.

Furthermore, the UBS replaced older translations for 623 million people with 25 different languages and finished several other translation projects.

Bible Translation Roadmap

“Bible translation must remain the key task of the UBS and requires special effort, focus and sustainable resourcing”, said Alexander Schweitzer, of the Strategic Leadership Team of UBS, in an interview with Bible Society for the Netherlands and Flanders.

That is why they created the Bible Translation Roadmap in 2018, which aims to finish 1,200 translations of the Bible, which can be read by about 600 million people by 2038.

“God's Word should be made available in a shape and form which bridges the gap between the original setting of the Biblical texts and today's cultures, societies and languages. Nothing speaks more to the heart than the heart language. Revisions of existing translations do that too”, stressed Schweitzer.

He plans to finish 200 translations of the bible by the end of this year, while 300 will still be under translation.