Non-European versions
Translations of parts of the Bible are known to have existed in only seven Asian and four African languages before the 15th century. In the 17th century Dutch merchants began to interest themselves in the missionary enterprise among non-Europeans. A pioneer was Albert Cornelius Ruyl, who is credited with having translated Matthew into High Malay in 1629, with Mark following later. Jan van Hasel translated the two other Gospels in 1646 and added Psalms and Acts in 1652. Other traders began translations into Formosan Chinese (1661) and Sinhalese (1739).
A complete printed Japanese New Testament reputedly existed in Miyako in 1613, the work of Jesuits. The first known printed New Testament in Asia appeared in 1715 in the Tamil language done by Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, a Lutheran missionary. A complete Bible followed in 1727. Six years later the first Bible in High Malay came out.
The distinction of having produced the first New Testament in any language of the Americas belongs to John Eliot, a Puritan missionary, who made it accessible to the Massachusetts Indians in 1661. Two years later he brought out the Massachusetts Indian Bible, the first Bible to be printed on the American continent.
By 1800 the number of non-European versions did not exceed 13 Asian, four African, three American, and one Oceanian. With the founding of missionary societies after 1800, however, new translations were viewed as essential to the evangelical effort. First came renderings in those languages that already possessed a written literature. A group at Serāmpore (in India) headed by William Carey, a Baptist missionary, produced 28 versions in Indian languages. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, translated the New Testament into Chinese in 1814 and completed the Bible by 1823. Adoniram Judson, an American missionary, rendered the Bible into Burmese in 1834.
With European exploration of the African continent often came the need to invent an alphabet, and in many instances the translated Scriptures constituted the first piece of written literature. In the 19th century the Bible was translated into Amharic, Malagasy, Tswana, Xosa, and Ga.
In the Americas, James Evans invented a syllabary for the use of Cree Indians, in whose language the Bible was available in 1862, the work of W. Mason, also a Wesleyan missionary. The New Testament appeared in Ojibwa in 1833, and the whole Bible was translated for the Dakota Indians in 1879. The Labrador Eskimos had a New Testament in 1826 and a complete Bible in 1871.
In Oceania, the New Testament was rendered into Tahitian and Javanese in 1829 and into Hawaiian and Low Malay in 1835. By 1854 the whole Bible had appeared in all but the last of these languages as well as in Rarotonga (1851).
In the 20th century the trend toward the development of non-European Bible translations was characterized by an attempt to produce “union” or “standard” versions in the common language underlying different dialects. One such is the Swahili translation (1950) that makes the Scriptures accessible to most of East Africa. Within the realm of non-European translation there has also been a movement for the updating of versions to bring them in line with the spoken language, especially through the use of native Christian scholars. The first example of this was the colloquial Japanese version of 1955.
By 1970 some part, if not the entire Bible, had been translated into more than 100 languages or dialects spoken in India and over 300 in Africa.