Minority language Bibles are an endangered species
I don’t think the future for print Bibles in the remaining Bibleless languages is bright. There are numerous factors that I believe will contribute to the demise of New Testaments in minority languages.
Existing competitors
A full Bible has huge symbolic power and authority. It symbolizes a person’s membership in a church and signals a certain status in larger society. Therefore, anyone from a minority ethnic group who joins the church is going to want a full Bible. It doesn’t matter what language it is in. And particularly I believe a person will want the Bible that is used by pastors and other church leaders and that is normally the Bible of a large regional or national language.
Print is dead
Bible societies are finding it increasingly difficult to fund the publishing of existing Bibles. New Testaments for small language populations are essentially boutique products in a mass market. The more marginalized the group the more likely that other factors such as illiteracy and lack of financial power are going to contribute toward the perception of a New Testament as a bad investment. Bible publishing is costly and heavily subsidized. And printing Bibles for small ethnic groups is a losing proposition for already cash-strapped Bible agencies.
Orality
The current orality craze is pulling energy and resources away from traditional New Testament projects. Print Bibles are being portrayed as inappropriate for oral cultures. There is much to like about Orality and I support it but it does signal one more reason why minority Bibles are going to be a hard sell in the near future.
Electronic and audio alternatives
At least here in Africa, the rate of mobile phone adoption has been staggering and users continue to stretch the boundaries of what a phone can be used for. Mobile phone Bibles are free (if you can get around the download) and importantly they bring Scripture into a device that is thoroughly literate and social. Audio Scripture is also a huge medium that will take a chunk out of the print Bible market. By the time a New Testament hits the street in print it can potentially have been on audio devices for months or even years.
Conclusion
In summary, I think those wishing to reach a certain saturation point for distribution of print Bibles and New Testaments in minority languages are going to face frustration and ultimately failure. A New Testament dedication has for decades been perceived as the crowning achievement of years of hard work. I expect we need to readjust our expectations and look to audio and electronic versions as achievements worthy of celebration and in fact more effective in reaching the most people possible with the Good News.
That is truly a sad truth. I, personally find it to READ the scripture gives one a deeper and more insightful approach to the Word. It also allows easier interpretation.
Most cultures in Africa are primarily oral so the experience of many Africans would be opposite to yours. They understand less when reading than when listening.
I agree with your assessment of the economics of distribution of print New Testaments. For the NT to be used, it will need to go audio or on a phone. That, however, poses its own problems. The national Bible Societies in Africa live off of distribution. How will the distribution network for a free product be maintained? The future for whole Bibles is a bit brighter.
We need a radical shift in thinking and strategy from production of print translations to sustained impact, or the effect of the years of effort of translators will be short lived.
Ed, thanks for commenting!
You wrote:
“The national Bible Societies in Africa live off of distribution”
That statement would be interesting to verify. If they survive by distributing Bibles at a price but aren’t in fact fulfilling their mandate then it would be a good idea to rethink the “subsidized Bibles + sales for sustainability model.” I’m not saying I have a better alternative!
Certainly alternatives to print media are going to gain in importance. However many people do really like to carry a book to church.
We are helping people to find Bibles in print and many other media at
http://www.worldbibles.org
This free site is an on-line listing of over 20,000 Internet links for Bibles in over 4,000 languages. We hope it will help people to actually FIND Bibles in the minority languages.
It is amazing that so much effort has been put into translation, and relatively speaking so little effort into making these translated Scriptures widely available. For many languages the only printed Bibles may be found in a warehouse or shed somewhere – and quite likely they are being eaten by termites! Even Bible Society Bookstores have very little range.
Recently there are encouraging signs of minority language Bibles being made available on line by sites like virtualstorehouse and ScriptureEarth
It seems that many Bible translators were thinking of the needs of “this generation only” instead of considering the needs of perhaps multitudes of future generations who might also like to read the Bible in their own languages.