BIBLE IN MANY TONCUES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 306, 19 September 1908, Page 12

BIBLE IN MANY TONCUES.

The Rev. John Sharp, who has just retired from the position of editorial superintendent of the British and Foreign Bible So- ; ciety, London, has for the last 28 years been . chiefly concerned with the work of superintending the translation of the Bible into the different tongues of mankind all over the world. "When I first entered the Bible House in - 1880," he recently said, "the Scriptures, or parts of them, had been translated into 238 ' t languages. Since that time the number of translations has gone on increasing until at the present day it stands at 412. Great as that is, much mora remains to bo done. For instance, in the Malay Archi-' pelago alone there are certainly more than 100 languages as yet untouched by the translator. Only 92 out of Indians 150 languages have as yet been translated, and there are scores of others in'like case in Africa and New Guinea. The difficulties of the work are, of course, tremendous. Take the case of preparing a Bible for the use of the Nupe tribe, inhabiting a part of Africa near the River Niger. In their - language one word may have as many as eight different moanings, according to the _ inflection put upon it in utterance. Yet in print only one word is available. The reprinting of the Bible in the characters used by the Cree Indians of North Amcrica has just been completed, ■ and only a little while ago two Mohawk Indianß came into the Bible House to see how their: edition was getting on. Since the establish-' raent of the Bible Society in 1804, more than 209,000,000 copies of either portions or the whole of tho Bible have been distributed all ■ over the world." ''