Organised Bible translation work at international level was carried out even before the establishment in 1804 of the British and Foreign Bible Society but it is an unques-tionable fact that the BFBS that launched the Bible society movement played a key role in the explosive growth in the number of Bible translations. The two centuries since then have seen the emergence of many organisations with a sound profes-sional and organisational background.
The Bible League was formed in 1938 in the United States. It is an interdenomi-national organisation with Protestant roots, operating on a nonprofit basis. In 2006 it distributed 19.3 million Bibles through close to 211,000 Bible study groups.
The Michigan-based Bibles International is an organisation with Baptist links, set up in the United States in 1981 to support Bible translation and literacy programs.
The Catholic Biblical Federation is an international body set up for Catholics to assist biblical pastoral work. The organisation has its headquarters in Stuttgart. At present it carries out Bible work in 129 countries, with 92 full and 234 associated member organisations. There is very good international co-operation between the Catholic Bible Federation and the United Bible Societies.
The International Forum of Bible Agencies set up in 1990 is a consultative body; 25 organisations dealing with Bible translation and Bible mission take part in its work.
Among its full members are the American Bible Society, the Bible League, the Lutheran Bible Translators, the International Scripture Association and the Wycliffe Bible Translators. The United Bible Societies is among its co-operating partners.
The Institute for Bible Translation was established in 1973 in Sweden with the principal aim of translating the Bible into the languages and dialects spoken by the non-Slavic peoples living in the territory of the Soviet Union.
The organisation previously known as the International Bible Society has been known since its merger in 2007 with Send the Light as IBS-STL Global. Today the International Bible Society formed in New York in 1809 is having Bible translations made by around 250 recognised experts within the frame of 45 translation projects around the world.
108 So far it has made 87 Bible translations, it holds the copyright of the New Interna-tional Version (NIV) that has been a big success internaInterna-tionally.
The Lockman Foundation established in 1942 focuses mainly on translating the Bible into the major (world) languages, such as English, Spanish, Chinese, Japa-nese and Hindi.
The main aim of Lutheran Bible Translators established in 1964 is to have the Bible translated into minor languages.
In 1831 a few of the earlier founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society set up the Trinitarian Bible Society which is very active in a few Anglo-Saxon coun-tries with traditionally Protestant roots. Due to their conservative Calvinist ap-proach, its Bible translations are made on the basis of verbal inspiration and the Greek textus receptus.
The biggest and most extensive of the international organisations engaged in Bible translation is the United Bible Societies. Its beginnings reach back to the British and Foreign Bible Society founded in 1804. After the First World War the bible societies with larger missionary areas began to seek opportunities for co-operation; the American, the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Scottish Bible Society first met for this purpose in London in 1932. In 1939 in the Dutch town of Woudschoten these three bible societies, together with the French, the Dutch and the Norwegian Bible Society established the World Council of Bible Societies. In 1946 at another meeting in Haywards Heath, England, the United Bible Societies was officially established.
The World Bible Translation Center was set up in 1973 in Arlington, Texas with the aim of producing easy-to-read (“simple”) Bible translations in the world’s 100 biggest languages. So far around 30 of these translations have been completed.
The Wycliffe Bible Translators (Wycliffe Bible Translators International and Sum-mer Institute of Linguistics) was established in 1934 by William CaSum-meron Townsend. To date it has been associated with close to 600 Bible translations.
The forerunner of Bible translation theories must be sought in formal equiva-lence (one of the most extreme manifestations of this was the Aquila translation that is closer to transliteration). The rival translation theory, translation accord-ing to the meanaccord-ing appeared already in the classical age; it was held also by Saint Jerome, an outstanding stylist, according to the evidence of letter 106. Luther too followed this approach in his translation. The big Western Bible societies formed in the early 1800s adopted the principle of formal equivalence and applied it in their Bible translations. In the second half of the 20th century the theory of “dy-namic equivalence”, also known as functional equivalence, was developed in the professional forums of the United Bible Societies. This moves beyond the prin-ciple of formal equivalence and sets the goal of rendering the meaning of the original text in such a way that as far as possible the text “recreated” by the trans-lator has the same effect on its readers as the original text did on the first readers.
But in Hungary even the new Hungarian Protestant translation that appeared in 1975 can be regarded more as formal equivalence.
Current international theory and practice of Bible translation
According to the figures available for 2006, the United Bible Society distrib- 109
utes an annual total of around 25 million full Bibles, 14 million New Testaments (and Psalms) and around 350 million collections of texts, gospel leaflets intended for mission purposes. Naturally on a world scale the effect of globalisation can also be felt in the publication and printing of Bibles: standardised Bible sizes and in order to increase the number of copies, centralised production in a few world printing centres, such as Brazil, China and South Korea.
Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council created the possibility for co-operation between Protestant and Catholic Bible transla-tors. In the wake of this initiative, by 1974 around 170 joint Catholic-Protestant Bible translations were in progress around the world. By 2007 43 interdenomina-tional Bible translations had been completed and work continued on 91. Plans were also made for a Hungarian-language ecumenical Bible translation but, un-fortunately, the work of interdenominational co-ordination that speeded up in 1998–99 is at present suspended. We trust that the joint Catholic-Protestant cel-ebration in Hungary of the Year of the Bible will bring enormous progress in this matter too, not to mention the significant fact that the role of Scripture in the life of the church and its mission will also be a topic of the episcopal synod beginning in the Vatican in October 2008.
The final chapter of the study sums up the agreement setting out the founda-tions for the theoretical and practical realisation of interdenominational (or ecu-menical) Bible translations adopted in London on 10 January 1968 by the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the United Bible Societies.