New World Translation (2013 revision) in additional languages

[Sepie93]

Just to add to the above posts about Arabic. As has been mentioned, Classical Arabic is what is used in the Quran. It is a very complicated dialect with many archaic words, but still mostly understandable to modern readers. 
 
About 100 years ago when pan-Arabist nationalism was on the rise, Arabs decided to create a new dialect called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) based on the Classical Arabic for the purposes of uniting all Arab tribes, who have their own dialects that are not always mutually intelligible. I must say that MSA is not just the standard written form of literary Arabic, but it is a living spoken language used by all educated Arabs in public and official events. The government, the news media, schools, universities etc  all use MSA. 
 
There is now a new version of MSA emerging called colloquial MSA, which is a mixture of the standard Arabic and dialects. I hear it more often in the media, especially in international informal events and platforms like YouTube where Arabs are trying to come across as educated and reach a wider audience of young people. 
 
I personally like the Levantine dialect that covers Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. I have not studied it purposefully, but I can mostly understand it, because it is, in my view, the closest to MSA and it sounds nice and soft. Arabic is a beautiful language and it is one of my favourites. 
 

Hahaha you touch a very, VERY sensitive subject here Everyone thinks their dialect is the closest to MSA

But I also prefer the Levantine Arabic and than especially the Syrian, Shami, form.
A few times I asked Arab brothers and sisters like, why isn't there a Bible translation in Levantine? And they were all like: may God forgive you.

Guess I'm the only one who thinks it's nice (Sorry for being off topic by the way).

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Six Bibles Released on June 28, 2020

In the midst of the ongoing global health crisis, Jehovah’s Witnesses continue to release the Bible in new languages.

https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/global/Six-Bibles-Released-on-June-28-2020/

It's amazing!

What really stood out for me was the number of Belize Kreol speaking publishers in the field, less than a 1000. And still, Jehovah taks care of their spiritual needs.

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[Hope]

So, how many new languages are we up to now? Last I saw was 115..

[MikeyRo]

44 minutes ago, Hope said:

So, how many new languages are we up to now? Last I saw was 115..

At least 189

[Thesauron]

It's amazing!

What really stood out for me was the number of Belize Kreol speaking publishers in the field, less than a 1000. And still, Jehovah taks care of their spiritual needs.

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I find the approach they took in the Totonac translation with regards to the various language variants, presenting alternate variants in footnotes, so that people speaking other various variants of Totonac can make use of the Bible.

[carlos]

On 6/30/2020 at 11:49 AM, mostHumble said:

Nwt Bible was released in Swati, Tsonga and Zulu on Sunday.

I was not sure where to post this, finally decided this might be the best place.

 

Swati (more commonly called Swazi in English) is a language spoken by some 2.4 million people in areas of South Africa. Yesterday I was looking for a Swati-English dictionary to check some words for another topic, and Google suggested this one:

https://glosbe.com/ss/en

 

That is an interesting website. When you search for a word, instead of giving you a definition it will show excerpts of text containing that word, and their translation into English. I was looking for the term "moya", which means "spirit". Do you notice something interesting in the results?

https://glosbe.com/ss/en/moya

 

Yes, all the examples are from our publications!

As with many other indigenous languages, I guess there are very few books and newspapers published in Swati, so Glosbe fed their database with some good quality publications that are available both in Swati and English: our publications!

Edited July 4, 2020 by carlos

[Hinata]

1 hour ago, carlos said:

That is an interesting website. When you search for a word, instead of giving you a definition it will show excerpts of text containing that word, and their translation into English. I was looking for the term "moya", which means "spirit". Do you notice something interesting in the results?

 

So that’s what that web sites like these was. Sometimes I’d search words on the internet and I’d end up in sites like these. But it was confusing since they contained theocratic excerpts, like scriptural quotations and even Watchtowers. This seem to happen frequently even on our language.

 

This is just one pure example. https://glosbe.com/ko/en/word But it makes sense, since our web site is practically only web site that has good quality translation and publications in such number of languages. The jw.org is indeed helping people all around the world.

 

[carlos]

13 hours ago, Hinata said:

So that’s what that web sites like these was. Sometimes I’d search words on the internet and I’d end up in sites like these. But it was confusing since they contained theocratic excerpts, like scriptural quotations and even Watchtowers. This seem to happen frequently even on our language.

I'm thinking that this may be related to this project we mentioned some months ago:

https://jwtalk.net/topic/43124-project-masakhane-for-machine-translation-of-african-languages/

 

Interesting how some languages have so little interest from a commercial viewpoint that nobody publishes any books in them. But the Organization does.

[Amygdala]

16 hours ago, carlos said:

Yes, all the examples are from our publications! 

I found that interesting, too! I used glosbe to translate English into Pidgin terminology, to which also surprisingly came up results from our translated Bible. It was great searching through it while I was searching to give comments in my own answers in Pidgin. Kind of was reassuring using direct theocratic terminology to get my meaning across. 😆

[Jay]

The complete New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released in Marathi. I'm very happy 😄😄😄😄

[Omoyeme]

Six Bibles Released on June 28, 2020

https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/global/Six-Bibles-Released-on-June-28-2020/

 

Swati, Tsonga, Zulu, Chitonga, Belize Kriol, Totonac

 

All praises to Jehovah!

 

[beejay]

Karen Sgaw, New World Translation of Greek Scriptures, released 5/07

[Sheep]

On 7/6/2020 at 9:27 PM, Omoyeme said:

Six Bibles Released on June 28, 2020

https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/global/Six-Bibles-Released-on-June-28-2020/

 

Swati, Tsonga, Zulu, Chitonga, Belize Kriol, Totonac

 

All praises to Jehovah!

Six more Bible released on July 4, 2020... second weekend in a row!

 

https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/global/Six-Bibles-Released-for-Second-Weekend-in-a-Row/

 

Bislama, Oromo, Latvian, Marathi, Bengali, Karen (S’gaw)

 

More praises to Jehovah!

[daydream]

On 7/8/2020 at 5:40 PM, beejay said:

 

 

Karen Sgaw, New World Translation of Greek Scriptures, released 5/07

 

Quote

 

Sgaw Karen or Sgaw Kayin, commonly known as Karen is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Sgaw Karen people of Myanmar and Thailand. A Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, Sgaw Karen is spoken by over a million people.

 

[LoneWanderer]

Wow, Bengali! That's a tough one...try being a publisher of good news in Bangladesh with what, 300 publishers, in a Muslim country of more than 160,000,000 people! I am pretty surprised to begin with that our brothers are allowed to act somewhat freely in there since their figures are reported annually. Unless it's one of those places where they are technically allowed to preach as long as they don't preach to Muslims.

 

I know we had a plenty of Bengali speakers when I was living in Sweden, but no organized language activity. I think there's a group or two in England? I did use to carry couple of tracts in the language with me, and a lo-oong time back I even had a couple of Bengali magazines in my service bag.

 

I also noticed that they now have branch representatives announcing the new translation such as the experienced brother from Finland branch with the Latvian translation (I guess Baltic countries being under the Finnish branch once more). I wonder if this is a Covid thing or a new procedure because so many languages are released. Previously they had GB members present whenever a new translation was released.

[LoneWanderer]

On 7/10/2020 at 3:33 PM, Mclove said:

 

And what a fantastic tool the NWT is going to be for the many communities of Karen speakers in the US. Below a map as shown by the jw.org meeting search for Karen groups and pre-groups (there were so many all wouldn't even appear on the map coast to coast):

Edited July 14, 2020 by LoneWanderer

[Sheep]

10 hours ago, LoneWanderer said:

Wow, Bengali! That's a tough one...try being a publisher of good news in Bangladesh with what, 300 publishers, in a Muslim country of more than 160,000,000 people! I am pretty surprised to begin with that our brothers are allowed to act somewhat freely in there since their figures are reported annually. Unless it's one of those places where they are technically allowed to preach as long as they don't preach to Muslims.

 

I know we had a plenty of Bengali speakers when I was living in Sweden, but no organized language activity. I think there's a group or two in England? I did use to carry couple of tracts in the language with me, and a lo-oong time back I even had a couple of Bengali magazines in my service bag.

 

I also noticed that they now have branch representatives announcing the new translation such as the experienced brother from Finland branch with the Latvian translation (I guess Baltic countries being under the Finnish branch once more). I wonder if this is a Covid thing or a new procedure because so many languages are released. Previously they had GB members present whenever a new translation was released.

Several years ago, a sister who used to be in my congregation went to serve where the need was greater... and moved into the Benglali group here in Montreal. (Likely a lot easier for her to go there than to try for Bangladesh. And she was allowed to preach to Muslims.) However it didn't go too well for her there so she came back to English. But later she took the SKE, and following that she was reassigned... to the Bengali group!

[Sepie93]

Several years ago, a sister who used to be in my congregation went to serve where the need was greater... and moved into the Benglali group here in Montreal. (Likely a lot easier for her to go there than to try for Bangladesh. And she was allowed to preach to Muslims.) However it didn't go too well for her there so she came back to English. But later she took the SKE, and following that she was reassigned... to the Bengali group!

Wauw! What an experience! I can imagine it was hard for her. Sometimes serving in a foreign language field comes with unique challenges. I'm convinced that SKE helped her a lot!

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[Thesauron]

The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was released in Changana and Macua over the weekend.

 

https://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=E&docid=702020325&srcid=share

[Sepie93]

As of today, Leviticus, Ruth, Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are availble in the nwt in Arabic.

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[Jendo]

I searched on jw.org, but I didnt found exact info.

In how many languages is nwt translated?

I found 185.

[MikeyRo]

1 hour ago, Janko said:

I searched on jw.org, but I didnt found exact info.

In how many languages is nwt translated?

I found 185.

It's 193 (source: https://www.jw.org/en/news/jw/region/global/Newsroom-Highlights-From-2020-Service-Year/)

[Jendo]

Wau! Thank You I searched this info for todays meeting (video) If there will be room I will comment it.

[Sepie93]

As of today, Esther has been published in the Arabic NWT. This is book 28 of 66.

 

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[jwhess]

Here is a note from JW.ORG

 

New World Translation Released in Three Indian Languages

On Sunday, October 25, 2020, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released in three Indian languages: Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi. The Bibles were released in electronic format during a prerecorded talk. Publishers tied in to the program virtually. They were able to download a copy of the Bible in their language immediately following the program.

[Dages]

5 hours ago, jwhess said:

Here is a note from JW.ORG

 

New World Translation Released in Three Indian Languages

On Sunday, October 25, 2020, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released in three Indian languages: Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi. The Bibles were released in electronic format during a prerecorded talk. Publishers tied in to the program virtually. They were able to download a copy of the Bible in their language immediately following the program.

That will surely help the work there. Respectively 60, 55 and 125 millions speakers...