Talk:List of Bible translations by language

Hawaiian Pidgin is not Hawaiian

In the section on Hawaiian, I have changed:

• "A new translation of the New Testament in Hawaiian Pidgin, titled Da Jesus Book, was published in 2000 by Wycliffe Bible Translators."

to:

• "A translation of the New Testament in Hawaiian Pidgin, titled Da Jesus Book, was published in 2000 by Wycliffe Bible Translators."

Otherwise, it sounds like the (newer) Hawaiian Pidgin translation and the (older) Hawaiian translation are two versions in the same language, which they are not. Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by perhaps the majority of locally born inhabitants of Hawaii today; it is an English-based pidgin. Hawaiian is a Polynesian language, the original language of the Hawaiian islands, now spoken by a small minority of the population and an endangered language undergoing (important) revival efforts. I will try to place quotes from both language versions in the article; that should make the point much clearer! --A R King 08:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggested Merge

The article List of Bible translators contains much information that belongs here, and vice versa. Perhaps both articles should continue to exist, but material should be distributed between the articles in a systematic fashion, to avoid redundancy on the one hand, and unmerited gaps on the other (for example, no entry for Danish translations).--woggly 09:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

What about putting everything into a table sortable on three columns: language, edition, translation? Egfrank 21:36, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the huge difference in style. The List of Bible translators really is a dry list, carrying information that could indeed be put into a table. But this article has actual articles in prose on the translations into various languages. (Personally, I think this one is both far more useful, interesting, and encyclopedic.)

So maybe this article shouldn't even be called a "list" but rather renamed to something more descriptive, such as Bible translations by language. The only reason it is currently called List of Bible translations is because the alphabetical language sections were separated from the main Bible translations article. That was a good idea, but it still isn't really just a list.

Another thought: If this page became Bible translations by language (or some other appropriate title), then maybe the alphabetical list information from List of Bible translators could either be appended bit-by-bit here at the end of each language section, or else put into a chart or a complete alphabetical list at the end of the article. Dovi 19:31, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like my suggestion didn't provoke much response, neither for or against. Since there is currently no opposition, I'll wait another day, and if no one objects I'll move this article to Bible translations by language.

Afterwards, the List of Bible translators can be made an appendix to this article or left on its own. Either way, it really should be put into a sortable table as suggested above. Dovi 10:33, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, still silence. I am going to move the article now. I'm not going to put the List of Bible translators into it though, since until it is converted to a sortable table it is incompatible with the current article. I will remove the "merge" notice from this article and leave it on the other, since it is the other that may (or may not) be merged into this one. Dovi 07:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Suggested re-structure and merge

Another, related, suggestion. This article is extremely long. Yet structurally it is simply a table of contents "Contents (by language)" which is itself an index into multiple, independent, per-language sections. I suggest that each per-language section become (be promoted to) an article in its own right: "Bible translations (Afrikaans)", etc. Then, when that is done, the List of Bible translators article can be merged, language by language, into the corresponding new "Bible translations (language)" article. Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. There are already some such articles — Chinese Bible Translations, German Bible translations, Slavic translations of the Bible, Spanish translations of the Bible, and Welsh Bible — going forward, let's try to establish a single naming convention — but moving most of this content into separate articles, even if they're stubs, seems to make a lot of sense. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 23:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Doing this would be a big task, but we can probably do it bit by bit. I suggest that we start with the languages that are already done, such as those mentioned above by Malik Shabazz:

• in the "Contents (by language)" section simply replace the existing wikilink for that language (e.g. [[#Welsh|Welsh]]) with a wikilink to the existing article (e.g. [[Welsh Bible|Welsh]])
• delete that section (e.g. [[#Welsh...]]) from the main article

That would establish the principle with known cases and provide the opportunity for refinements and adjustments. If that goes well, we can then work through the other languages (in their cases, copying the material to a new, per-language article). It might also be prudent to place an HTML comment in the "Contents (by language)" explaining to other editors what is happening. Feline Hymnic (talk) 14:48, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Let's see if I understand this proposal: This article would be the "main" article on "Bible Translations by Language". For languages where an article would not be a stub, there would be a link to the article, with no content here. For languages where an article would be a stub, the content will be in this article. "Stub", for this specific context, means "an article that simply contains the name of the translator, and the year that the Bible was translated into that language". If there are two or more translations, translators, or editions of the Bible in that language, it would be an article. If that understanding is correct, then the restructuring is a good thing. jonathon (talk) 20:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's about it. This article would become much smaller, as more-or-less a table-of-contents (list of languages) section, where each language then clicks to its own article. A few "stub" languages may remain in this article, but any expansion of a stub should lead to its becoming an article in its own right. Doubtless there will be some grey areas and fuzzy edges, but let not that distract us from exploring the general idea. (There will also be the WP:GFDL administrative issue about preserving the edit history of sections that become articles) Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:37, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Gray areas are easy enough to deal with, as they arise. The Wikipedia Foundation legal people can deal with the admin issues related to GFDL requirements.jonathon (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

There are good reasons to move forward according to the consensus discussed above. Occasionally, editors ignore the consensus, such as is discussed here and here.--AuthorityTam (talk) 19:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged List of Bible translators into this article. I agree that this should be a list-type article; a complete discussion of all translations is far too large of topic to cover in a single article. If the goal of this article is simplification to eventually get to a list, then I suggest we change the name back to List of Bible translations. There are also some formatting issues with this article; it looks different than nearly all other Wikipedia articles. I will open a request for comment once the merge is cleaned up; I think some opinions from experienced editors will be helpful in improving this article. Jminthorne (talk) 19:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

By request for comment, I meant peer review Request for feedback (it's been one of those days). Jminthorne (talk) 20:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agreee with your work and thank you for it. I suggest, as per above, to create as many new Articles, one for each language, as possible, and to transform this page in something similar to a list. A ntv (talk) 21:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Linking years and red links

When I edited this article to reformat the tables, I removed the copious amount of year-linking (e.g. 2007) that I found, but some of it has been replaced. As per WP:MS Overlinking and underlinking, please refrain from linking to years unless you feel it's absolutely necessary or relevant to the context.

I also removed a lot of red links; perhaps some of them should have been left, but I felt there were far too many and they didn't seem to be too relevant. I won't remove any more red links unless it becomes a problem again, but following WP:Red links, please make sure that anything you redlink is actually notable enough to warrant an entire article.

Thanks. Mr. Absurd (talk) 19:40, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Venus Latina -- subtle point of view problems?

I get the distinct impression that there is slight judgmental Point Of View in the "Venus Latina" section: [quote] "They were never rendered independently from the Hebrew or Greek; they vary widely in readability and quality, and contain many solecisms in idiom, some by the translators themselves, others from literally translating Greek language idioms into Latin...All of these translations were made obsolete by St. Jerome's Vulgate [/quote] Were made obsolete? Although in modern times there much value placed on having translations independent of the Greek Septuagint, and it seems fitting to describe the motivations for replacing the piecemeal translations-- these translations are a historical artifact and presently only studied as such. In the article here, it sounds like a recommendation is being made against them. For instance, in what sense were they "obsolete?" Historically speaking, because of the limitations of trade, scarceness of paper and scribes, literacy rate, etc., St. Jerome's was not universally available. It also is not clear here if St Jerome's was specifically endorsed by the Pope or other Catholic authorities, or if a declaration was made against previous translations. Just a little historical context would helpful here Cuvtixo (talk) 01:16, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

It's the Vetus Latina :) but you are basically right: if the situation as reported is a matter of broad academic consensus, we should point to a reference substantiating this. So, you are free to request a citation for the statement (add {{fact}}). --dab (𒁳) 08:37, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Modern translation efforts

I'm not sure if it is appropriate to add that Vision 2025 is experimenting with OLPC computers, for Bible Translations. (This was covered at BibleTech 2008.) I thought the speaker said that if the pilot is successful, they will be able to start work on every language by 2020, if funding is available. I can't find that comment in the audio files that are available.  :( jonathon (talk) 22:01, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

This article is missing information about important translations of the Bible in the Coptic, and Ge`ez languages. There is also a very ancient partial translation in sankrit.

The Article at times does a good job of showing which Bibles are Catholic, Orthodox and `quasichristian` protestant translations but is some cases, it is not so clear. This is a very important issue for readers of the article and I ask that you endevear to put accurate information on all Bible translations showing which group of Christians it belongs to. Let us face the truth in this, Catholics do not trust protestants at all when it comes to the Bible nor should we after they threw out seven books. I know that protestants and Orthodox do not trust Catholics, though I consider this just a blind prejudice. In any event, every version of the Bible listed here needs to be marked as a Catholic, protestant or Orthodox.

In Japan the early version of the Bible actually has been preserved. It is called the Mitedake. It is written entirely in Katakana characters and is not meant to be read aloud but only to be looked at. There are several of these still in existance and are kept by Japanese Catholics in Japan. These Bibles were used during the time when Christianity was illigal in Japan. Most of them are very old, some almost 500 years old. They are written on sheets of cloth that are meant to be rolled up or layed flat in a box for storage. They are considered an important treasure by the Catholic Church in Japan and though they are no longer used, the families that own them hold a kind of special prestige among the Catholic faithful here as proof of their 500 years of the family being Catholic and surviving the pursecution. Several of these Mitedake Bibles were recently studied and the Japanese Chanel NHK did a 2 hour report about the Hidden Christians that included information about these Bibles and video of the families and the Bibles were shown on Japanese TV. One of these Bibles was destroyed during the reign of Meiji my Samurai in Tsuwano Japan as a form of torture, since the Catholics who used it in secret for 300 years were forced to watch it burn. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.127.251.137 (talk) 05:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Zulu

I deleted the phrase "but it was still considered quite difficult to understand for the average Zulu person." It has had a "cite needed" tag since November 2007. I seriously doubt that it is any more difficult to read for a native user of Zulu, than the KJV is for a native user of English. I don't know which edition of the Zulu Bible I have, but it isn't any more difficult for me to read, than Illanga (http://www.ilanganews.co.za/) is.

The sentence "Work on the Old Testament is in progress, and should be completed around 2016." was deleted, because the article at http://www.biblesociety.org/wr_329/329_26.htm implies that it has been completed. What I can't tell is if the 1986 date is for the "new" Zulu orthography, or if it is a brand new translation. The South African Bible Society website doesn't clarify the issue. jonathon (talk) 23:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Modern Greek

The section on Modern Greek is in bad english ("revisioned" etc.) and besides sounds rather mixed up and generally uninformative. I suspect this could do with a great deal of tidying up (better: rewriting from scratch?) but don't have the expertise (or time) to do that myself, so I'm just asking for someone out there with the ability to attend to this if possible. For one thing, As far as I know the Vamvas translation was written in the mid-nineteenth century and therefore it is misleading to mention this AFTER a 1901 edition (of what? which translation?) has been introduced in the text. Altogether, could we have some reliable facts and a clear exposition? Thanks. Alan --A R King (talk) 21:56, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Request for feedback

I have requested comments on WP:FEED. Below is my request:

I just (roughly) completed a merge on this page, and it still needs a significant amount of editing to maintain its B class. Before I start on the detailing though, I would appreciate some high level perspective on the goals and format of this article. Specifically:

• This article was moved from List of Bible translations two years ago. Given its massive scope, it is only possible to provide a very brief treatment of every language in one article and I think it might be better to return to the previous name. Thoughts?
• The lead uses a non standard list format in lieu of a TOC. If this article is being transformed to a true list, should we remove the list from the lede and restore the TOC?
• Is it acceptable to footnote the external links (currently broken up by section) so they all appear in one section?
• What portions of this article's content are good candidates for splitting/deletion to reduce the article's size?
• Finally, there is an old suggestion on the talk page about converting this list into a sortable table. I like the idea. Does anyone have suggestions as to the appropriateness and feasibility of this suggestion? Jminthorne (talk) 21:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

"List of Bible Translations" redirects to the article page. Since the focus of this page is on languages, I think the current title "Bible Translations by Language" is more appropriate. My impression was that if the material would be a stub, then it would be in this article, but if would be more than a stub, then the language gets its own article. EG: "Cherokee" and "Azeri" are on the borderline of staying in this article, or being an article in its own right. The "Chinese" section should to be merged into the article on Chinese translations.jonathon (talk) 13:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

• "Bible Translations by Language" is more appropriate, as language determines the article's sections.
  
• A standard TOC would be totally inappropriate considering the number of sections (which will likely grow!), and the fact that many of the listed languages in the lead will actually redirect to other articles (eg "English" goes to English translations of the Bible).
  

Some effort can be made to create "child articles" from related languages; for example, I had created the article Bible translations (Cebuano) which someone changed to a redirect and moved INTO this article! In retrospect, I should have created something like Bible translations (languages of the Phillipines) to group together the translations into several related languages.
--AuthorityTam (talk) 14:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Right now, each Language is a section created with a two-level headline like this: ==English==. A useful TOC could be created by instead using three-level headlines for languages (like this: ===English===) and then using a new hierarchy of two-level headlines such as:

==Languages A-F==

==Languages G-L==

==Languages M-S==

==Languages T-Z==

Additionally, stub sections can be standardized with a brief intro paragraph if there is something there, but then follow that with a bullet for each translation title in that language. I can do some of this, but do not wish to step on other's work. I'd metaphorically sit down now.

--AuthorityTam (talk) 14:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is material being deleted?

Recently, two users have deleted a fair amount of text. I don't understand why. Would somebody please explain the logic for this. Should these be reversed? Pete unseth (talk) 13:08, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

If you were referring to the edits made by Alfredie (talk · contribs), I believe it was done in accordance with the instructions given via the hidden comment text within the edit window (also see the note in the post above regarding "child articles" etc.)

Note to editors
Following discussion on the 'Talk' page in June 2008, it is intended to split this article into
separate articles, one per language, usually called "Bible translations (Language)" (substitute
'Language'). Eventually this article will reduce towards a list of pointers to such articles.

1. Starting a new language?  Could you do so at such a page, please?  The only change you would
make to this page would be in the index immediately following.  See, for instance, "Bible
translations (Apache)".

2. Editing an existing language?  Could you consider splitting it out into a separate article?

Thanks.

It seems the user was not deleting content but instead splitting out languages into separate articles and removing the ones that were already done.

I have added a further note to editors to refer to the talk page first to see if this is still current consensus. I think mabut ybe it would be better if only those languages that can support a page larger than a stub be split into separate articles and the rest of the smaller entries should remain in this list. -- œ^™ 14:00, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Korean

The Revised Korean Version is called in my Korean Bible Korean Revised Version. Shall we change the present name?AurinKo (talk) 13:58, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Can some one please remove the red links?

There many places here where it says "Main article - translations of Bible into Language X" but then the link is in red, indicating that Wikipedia does not have an article with that title. Can some one please remove these misleading references to articles that are not in Wikipedia? For example, there is a sub-heading "Translations of the Bible into Xhosa" and then it says "Main article - translations of the Bible into Xhosa" but Wikipedia does not have an article of that name. I agree it is of interest to know that the whole Bible has been translated into Xhosa, but unless Wikipedia actually did have an article on the subject, we do not really need to put in the misleading red link.ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Done, but was there any specific reason why you didn't do the task yourself? Huon (talk) 22:22, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you - I just thought I had better raise the issue here first, just in case there had been articles on those at one time which got deleted, or to find out whether any one had any objections to my suggestion. Thank you for your help, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it's related to the ongoing since 2009 stop-start-efforts to break out notable languages into their own articles. Looking at it now, seems like all but Kazakh have been done. What should be left are minor languages. Or ones where a Bible translation has little significance. The remaining redlinks being removed is about time, except Kazakh, and I'll fix that now by breaking it out. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:39, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Bible in Klingon

Is it worth mentioning here that the Bible has been translated into Klingon?ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:47, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I would say it is worth mentioning, in the trivia department. But how much of the Bible have they done? Pete unseth (talk) 22:54, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

see http://www.kli.org/wiki/index.php?Klingon Bible Translation Project Looks like rather more than Quenya so I would think it should be added. LothianLiz (talk) 12:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Quenya has been broken out to Bible translations into fictional languages. If there's a WP:RS then please feel free to add. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

German

The German translations are missing AurinKo (talk) 02:22, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Aren't some in the German article? In ictu oculi (talk) 21:17, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

What happened to this article?

This article needs a complete reorganization. Editor2020 (talk) 15:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Editor2020. There was a discussion to break out to individual articles. Looks okay to me. Other than that I can't see why Dakota is still here. It's still in A-Z. What's the problem? In ictu oculi (talk) 21:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Should not the title be a "List of Bible translations by language"?

Should not the title of this article be a List of Bible translations by language? That would be more in keeping with Wikipedia convention. Peaceray (talk) 08:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Now that most of the languages have a separate article, this article does look very unpleasing as it currently stands. I would suggest moving all the remaining languages into separate articles where possible, and converting this article into a tabular list of the first translation of the Bible in each language, with columns for the first translation of any part of the Bible, first translation of the NT, and first translation of the entire Bible; and renaming the page accordingly. BabelStone (talk) 12:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, now that the last significant chunk - the Native American languages - have gone a move to List of... is justified. However, the list still serves as an incubator for new articles, so please don't anyone go deleting the stubs that are still here. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Finished. Good to go to list format. Who will do that? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Reformatting done. There may be minor errors, so interested editors are invited to check. Thanks to all who have worked to achieve this over the last few years. Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:08, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

List by date of translation

I was searching for a list of languages by date they were translated into the bible. The present format of this article makes it very difficult to gather this information. I was hoping for something similar to wikipedia article of List of languages by first written accounts. 66.81.29.56 (talk) 16:06, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Karen & Kareni?

Are Karen & Kareni really two different languages? Pete unseth (talk) 12:35, 7 November 2015 (UTC)