Northern Cameroon · 41,000 speakers
Language K
Luke and Acts finished. Romans in consultant check this November.
Every Tongue Project · Translation desk report
Counted through 30 September 2026
6,918
verses approved by a consultant since January
Drafted by 112 translators in 38 languages, read aloud in villages, back-translated into English and checked word by word with a consultant. A verse only goes on this count once it has passed all four.
A consultant's desk during a checking session, Duncanville
- languages in active drafting
- 38
- New Testaments in community checking
- 14
- dedications planned for 2027
- 6
Why the heart language
People pray in the language their mother sang to them
Most of the communities we serve have a Bible in a trade language: French, Swahili, Hindi, Spanish. Many people can read it. Very few feel it speaks to them. It is the language of school forms and government offices.
So we do not send translators. We find them. Every project is led by speakers of the language, chosen by their own churches, trained by us and paid fairly. Our job is the training, the software, the checking and the funding, and then getting out of the way.
The process
From first draft to dedication
A New Testament takes eight to twelve years. Every verse goes through these four stages, usually more than once.
Step 1: Draft
Two or three translators work from the Greek with study helps in Paratext, the standard translation software, one passage at a time.
Step 2: Read aloud
Drafts are read to village groups: grandmothers, teenagers, the pastor. If they hesitate or misunderstand, the verse goes back.
Step 3: Back-translate
Someone outside the team translates the draft literally back into English, so a consultant can see what it really says.
Step 4: Check
A consultant sits with the team, verse by verse, for two to three weeks. Only then does a passage count as done.
The full process
The languages
Six of the thirty-eight
Some names are replaced with letters to protect the teams. Each card shows where the work stands this autumn.
Andean highlands · 180,000 speakers
Southern Quechua variety
Full New Testament in community checking. Audio recording starts in March.
Mainland Southeast Asia · 12,000 speakers
Language T
First draft of Mark, written in a script the team helped standardise.
Sahel · 230,000 speakers
Language R
Genesis and Exodus drafted. A women's oral storying team began in July.
South Asia · 64,000 speakers
Language S
New Testament dedicated in 2025. Now drafting Psalms for use in worship.
Central Asia · 9,000 speakers
Language M
Two translators in training. The first verse ever written in the language: John 1:1.
The reason for the name
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne.
First hearings
What people say when the draft is read aloud
God speaks our language too? Then he has been listening this whole time.
It sounds like my mother.
When the French Bible says 'forgive', I understand it. When ours says 'untie the rope', I feel it.
My son reads it to me now. I never went to school.
Read that verse again. Slowly.
We argued for two days about the word for 'shepherd'. Nobody here keeps sheep. We keep goats.
A chapter is about one month of a team's work
Sponsor one for $45 a month and you will get the back-translation of your chapter, in English, when it passes the consultant check.