The number of global language groups without a Bible translation being developed in their primary language has dropped below 1,000 for the first time—a major milestone toward the goal of getting the Scripture into a form everyone can access.

ProgressBible, a nearly 10-year-old network of more than 30 evangelical ministries that tracks global Bible access statistics, says there are now 985 languages for which a Bible translation has yet to begin development. That number is a sharp decline from just three years ago, when there were 1,892 language groups, representing 145 million people, without a Bible translation being developed. Much of the progress recently has been among several major languages in sensitive areas being started in the last three years, the group says.

In 1999, a group of mission organizations adopted Vision 2025, an endeavor to see Bible translation started in this generation for every language that still needs it.

Christy Liner, director of partnerships for SIL and ProgressBible’s former program director, said in a statement released by Wycliffe Global Alliance that just four years ago, the Vision 2025 task still looked decades away. Liner says there are still large barriers to overcome, including 392 known sign languages and language groups that are hard to access, especially in East Asia.

“But if you just look at it as a whole,” Liner says, “in a way it actually feels like maybe it’s within reach. Maybe it’s not so crazy. And it used to feel like there was just no way.”

Globally, according to ProgressBible, some 6 billion people now have access to the full Bible in their primary language and 7.3 billion have some of the Scripture in their primary language. So that makes around 99.5% of the world with either access to some of the Bible in a language they can understand, or access coming soon because a translation into their language is underway.

The 756 languages that have a full Bible translation represent 6 billion of the world’s 7.4 billion population, according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Of the remaining 1.4 billion, 835 million have language access to the New Testament and another 468 billion have portions of the Bible in their language.

Terry Dehart, ProgressBible data analyst, celebrates the progress made but notes that the remaining people groups may be the hardest to engage with Scripture.

“When I look at the numbers … The low-hanging fruit has been picked. We’re down to the hard ones,” Dehart says.

“When you look at East Asia, it’s flat. There has been almost no change since 2020. And we need a movement of God, full stop. We’ve done everything we can think of and it’s flat. So now what? We need God to intervene.”

Photo courtesy of ProgressBible