Pathways to approach reading the biblical text are endless. For English Bible readers, a couple of clicks opens access to dozens of English translations on Bible Gateway or BibleHub. If we use specialized tools like Logos or others, we might see even more. In fact, there are an estimated 900 different translations into English—much, much more than any other language in the world.
Even so, about half of all other languages, approximately 3,500, have at least part of the Bible translated. The widely varied linguistic and cultural features of each of these languages illuminate unique perspectives on the biblical text, uncovering a treasure trove that reflects the various facets of light of scripture. This view through the prism of hundreds of other languages may reveal rich details that even a person with a full handle of the original text might miss.
This is what underlies the United Bible Societies’ Translation Insights & Perspectives (TIPs) tool, a large and ongoing collection of Bible translation data from around the world that’s freely available to both the Church and the Bible translation community. Though it is still a relatively new tool, more than 870 languages are already cooperating to unlock the multilingual prism of the Bible, covering every single verse of scripture.
A short video illustrating the power of Translation Insights & Perspectives (TIPs)
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