Home 2023

Bible translation movement shows big progress

After a predictable slowdown during the first two years of the pandemic, the global Bible translation movement saw major advances in the past year — with Asia and Africa leading the way.

Today, more people speaking more languages have access to more of the Bible than at any time in history, according to ProgressBible. Up to 97.4 percent of all people in the world have access to at least some Scripture, with up to 80 percent having the full Bible and 91 percent having at least the New Testament. These numbers are rising rapidly. In the past year* alone:

60 million more people have access to the full Bible in the language they know best.
27 million more people have access to the New Testament.
And, Bible translation work has begun in 356 more languages.

*August 2022 to August 2023

Scripture is being made available in print, digital, audio formats, along with sign languages. These examples are from the Tao people of Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan. Photo: Marc Ewell, Wycliffe Global Alliance

Terry Dehart, data analyst with ProgressBible, partially attributes the acceleration this year to a rebound from the pandemic years. Another large factor, he adds, is that the collective Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) is making a big push with its partners around the world to start Bible translation and then report on progress.

More than half of all languages on earth now have Bible translation work happening—some for the first time and some working toward complete Bibles or undergoing revisions. According to ProgressBible, the world has 7,394 living languages (including hundreds of Deaf sign languages not always reflected in other lists).

This leaves the number of language communities waiting for Bible translation to begin at just 1,268 — 412 fewer than a year ago. In other words, almost 25 percent of the remaining languages listed in 2022 saw projects planned or started in 2023. And, for the first time, the number of people in the world waiting for Bible translation to begin is under 100 million — only about 1.3 percent of all people.

Indonesia, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea each started or have planned projects in 30 or more languages in the past year. Those three countries account for more than half of the global increase in the past year.

Notable for 2023’s snapshot is the acceleration as compared to the worst years of the pandemic, 2020-2022. This chart shows the striking numbers, globally and by region:

Global Scripture Access

Rates of progress, 2023 vs. 2020-22

Shown in numbers of languages

Source: ProgressBible

A maturing movement

In South Africa, people prayed over the audio devices containing translated Sepulana Scriptures before they were distributed to members of that community. Photo: Jennifer Pillinger, Wycliffe South Africa

Dehart says he sees evidence in these statistics that the Bible translation movement is maturing. Where previous generations’ goal often was “missionaries arrive, work, complete the New Testament and move on", today a much larger vision has taken shape — completing the whole Bible, updating and revising dated translation, often with language communities and local churches taking on more of the task themselves—along with helping their communities continually engage with the translated Scripture.

“It's much more of an ongoing task than a single event,” Dehart says. “Seeing hundreds of languages with a Bible or New Testament and an ongoing project suggests that we are pushing past what was the initial goal and are trying to sustain a recent, full translation of the Bible over the long haul.”

Stephen Coertze, executive director of the Wycliffe Global Alliance, affirmed the importance of Scripture Access statistics as one way to measure progress in worldwide Bible translation.

“But the real stories are found in changed lives and communities as people encounter God through his Word, and as the worldwide church moves toward greater unity in Christ,” Coertze said. “For us as an Alliance, our overarching vision remains our desire to see every individual, community and nation transformed through God’s love and Word expressed in their language and culture.”

“Though we continue to celebrate translation starts and work in progress, we continue to work toward full Scripture translation for each language community, adequate revisions, and Scripture in the format (written, oral, signed) that each language community needs,” he added. “To see our desired vision fulfilled, we will continue to relate with the church and other partners as we collectively journey to see each person to have the ability to interact with God through his Word.”

The Wycliffe Global Alliance presents Global Scripture Access Statistics annually from data provided through ProgressBible by Alliance organisations, SIL International, United Bible Societies and many other partners. Data is current as of 1 September 2023. Our full report— including informational graphics, data on world population and number of languages, and explanations of terminology—is available here.

•••

Story: Jim Killam, Gwen Davies

Alliance organisations may download and use the images from this article.

News

View all articles

Special Report - May 2025

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities. In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.