2011 Scripture Access Statistics

 

Scripture exists in almost 2700 of the 6837 languages currently known to be in use.

At least 4.8 billion people have a Bible available in their first language. A further 595 million people have the New Testament (but only some, if any, of the Old Testament).

Work is in progress for many of the communities who have none of God’s Word in their language or insufficient Scripture. Current estimates suggest around 350 million people speaking 2040 languages may have a need for Bible translation to begin.

Today, over 100 organizations from more than 60 nations form the Wycliffe Global Alliance. Since the first Wycliffe organization began in 1942, people from these organisations, working alongside local communities, have assisted in the translation of 781 complete New Testaments and 27 complete Bibles, potentially impacting around 145 million people speaking 749 languages.

Working in partnership with Faith Comes by Hearing, personnel have helped to complete 247 Audio New Testaments as of 30th September 2011. This amounts to 40% of FCBH audio New Testament Scriptures

Wycliffe partner JAARS has dubbed The JESUS Film into 145 languages, some or all of the Luke video in 248 languages and some or all of the Genesis video in 86 languages. Personnel from participating organizations in the Alliance have also assisted in many more of the over 1100 JESUS films completed to date.

Alliance personnel also help produce thousands of resources for literacy, education, health and other development-related goals.

The participating organizations of Wycliffe Global Alliance are responsible for over 7000 staff working alongside many partner organizations, individuals from local communities and national organizations in languages from 99 countries.

In 1999, when Wycliffe and key partners adopted Vision 2025, we reported our involvement in almost 1100 of the 1500 translation programs known to be in progress. Since the start of Vision 2025 more than 250 New Testaments have been published with Wycliffe involvement and new work has begun in almost 700 languages.

By Sept 2011, personnel from participating organizations in the alliance were involved in 1476 active language programs: About a third of these languages have populations less than 10,000, a third between 10,000 and 100,000 and a third over 100,000 speakers.

Additional work is being undertaken in a further 500 languages by organizations outside of the Wycliffe Global Alliance.

There are many other numbers we could report on, and many we do not know. We do not have a count of how many lives have been touched and transformed as a result of Bible translation. We do not have a figure for the number of people who have prayed or given financially so that others might give their time and sometimes their lives.

We speak on behalf of millions of lives that only God can count when we say, "Thank you!"

All information taken from Wycliffe Global Alliance data systems Sept 2011
This document is also available in PDF format.
Further details about these statistics are available in the 2011 Statistics FAQ document