Dear Reader,
The first Tamil translation of the New Testament was printed in 1715 by Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, a Protestant missionary from Germany. Later, Johann Philipp Fabricius, another German missionary, improved on all earlier translations, and his work became the standard Tamil Bible version. About 70 years later, British missionary and educationist Peter Percival invited Arumuka Navalar, a Jaffna-born scholar of Shaivism (a branch of Hinduism), to create a new translation. Navalar’s book, called the “Navalar version”, was considered experimental, and most Tamil Protestants did not accept it.
All these scholars—Ziegenbalg, Fabricius, Percival, and Navalar—have fascinating lives that we could discuss endlessly, but resisting the temptation (ha, that biblical word again), let us talk about another allied subject: the many translations of the Bible, which is by any measure the best-selling book of all times, with an estimated five billion copies sold and distributed.
According to reliable estimates, the Bible has been translated fully into more than 700 languages and partially into over 2,500 languages, making it the most translated book in history. These translations have left their mark on cultures, languages, and societies worldwide. In fact, the Bible, its literary value, and its translations have a fascinating history, studied by believers and non-believers alike (evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a vociferous critic of Christianity, says the Bible should be read as a great work of literature).
Most of us know that the Bible was originally written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. One of the earliest major translations was the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament completed around 132 BCE (over a century before Jesus Christ was reportedly born). This paved the way for spreading biblical texts beyond their original languages. In 405 CE, Jerome finished theLatin Vulgate, which became the go-to Bible in Western Europe for over a thousand years. It influenced the development of Latin and, by extension, many European languages.
The Protestant Reformation kicked off a new wave of Bible translations. The Reformers believed that every Christian should be able to read and understand the Bible for themselves. This drove a push for translations into vernacular languages. Martin Luther’s German Bible (1534) was a game-changer that helped standardise the German language and sparked a trend of translating the Bible into everyday languages people spoke.
In England, William Tyndale’s work laid the groundwork for the King James Version (KJV, 1611), which had a huge impact on the English language. Many common phrases we use today, like “the apple of my eye” or “a fly in the ointment,” come from this translation. In fact, the KJV is so popular that historian Adam Nicolson wrote a brilliant work about it, titled God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.
As European powers expanded their reach, more Bible translations followed. In the Americas, John Eliot translated the Bible into Algonquin (Natick dialect) in 1663, one of the first in an indigenous American language. it is said the Eliot Bible helped preserve the language but also played a role in changing native culture.
In Africa, Robert Moffat’s Setswana (Tswana) Bible in 1857 was groundbreaking. It not only spread Christianity but also helped codify the written form of Setswana, impacting education and literature in Botswana. Asia saw numerous translations too. In India, William Carey’s work in Bengali and other languages (early 1800s) influenced the development of modern Indian literature. In China, Robert Morrison’s Chinese Bible (1819) played a role in standardising written Chinese. In Papua New Guinea, home to over 800 languages, recent translations have helped preserve many small languages. The Huli Bible (2011) is one example, serving about 70,000 speakers.
Bible translations across the globe are a sociocultural phenomenon because they often create or standardise writing systems for languages, which impacts education, literature, and cultural preservation and also introduces new concepts and vocabulary. For instance, the coinage of the Japanese word for “angel” (tenshi) was heavily influenced by the Bible’s Japanese translations. This does not discount the fact that these translations were used by colonisers and led to cultural clashes, cultural erasures, and bland homogenisation.
But going back to the first Tamil translation of the New Testament, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg was more than just a translator, more even than just the first Protestant missionary to arrive in India in 1706. As S. Gunasekaran writes in this brilliant piece, Ziegenbalg was a Tamil scholar and printer, a cultural bridge between Tamil Nadu and Europe, an educationist, linguist, writer, church founder, and more. His work laid the foundation for future Protestant missions in India and set a model for engaging with local languages and cultures. Read the essay here (it is outside the paywall) and let us know your comments.
Also, if you have a story to share about a translation that has influenced this country’s plural literature, do write in.
Wishing you a lovely week ahead,
For Frontline,
Jinoy Jose P.
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