The Re-Calculated Number of Bibleless Languages

In September 2018, Wycliffe Bible Translators and its partners released a new figure for the number of languages with no Scripture and no project started.

Up to that point, we were down to around 1,550 completely-Bibleless languages of the 7000+ languages in the world. Wycliffe’s vision since 1999 was to have a translation project started in every language that still needed one by 2025. They call this Vision 2025. When they came up with this goal, they calculated that it would take until 2150 before all languages had a project started. Their desire to accelerate the pace of translation aimed to shave off 125 years of people living and dying without having a chance to read or hear one word of Scripture in their language.

Over the last three years, Bible translation organizations have collaborated to re-measure language need. There have been two problems with the statistics that organizations had been using. First, sign languages had been neglected. Second, many languages had either begun or almost begun a translation project when circumstances (such as war) put a halt to the project. These languages were removed from the “no project” list, but not re-added when the project halted.

Astonishingly, there are 368 different sign languages in the world. I had no idea. The number of languages that were halted but not re-added to the “no project” list total 399.

Therefore, the new official number for languages with no Scripture and no project started is 2,184.

It is great news that the collaboration of many organizations brought us a more accurate number, especially representing an entire global community of sign-language users. It is also good that these 399 other languages were not forgotten!

However, this new figure also means that we have even more work to do. My family is thrilled to help train more translators to tackle these additional languages by teaching at Dallas International University, one of Wycliffe’s major partner schools that trains Bible translation workers.

You can be involved in reaching these 2,184 people groups with Scripture too! Here are three ways:

1. Adopt one of these 2,184 people groups to pray for through the Bibleless Peoples Prayer Project.
2. Partner with our teaching ministry at Dallas Int’l through prayer, financial giving, or both.
3. Consider whether God wants to use you in Bible translation. If you follow Exegetical Tools, you’re probably into languages. You might make a good translator after some training (at, e.g., Dallas Int’l), or Wycliffe can use you in one of their hundreds of support roles: literacy worker, Scripture engagement specialist, accountant, pilot, engineer, electrician, recruiter, and many more. If you have a skill, you can be useful for the Bible translation effort. See all kinds of roles here.