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Translating Colonialism conference
Last week, international delegates from around the world met for the Translating Colonialism conference at Westminster College, University of Cambridge. The conference was the major event for the second year of the Global Bible project, and has been over a
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The Colonial Bible in Australia
Hilary Carey has published a new book with LangSci Press: The Colonial Bible in Australia: Scripture translations by Biraban and Lancelot Threlkeld, 1825-1859. This book provides an extended introduction to the scripture translations of Biraban, an Awabakal man, and the
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History, Reception, and Dissemination of Mother-Tongue Bibles in (post)Colonial Ghana
Over 50 people attended a workshop on 2 July 2024 at the Institute for Distance Learning (IDL) Amonoo-Neizer Conference Centre at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, to discuss aspects surrounding histories, legacies and dissemination of mother-tongue Bibles.
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The Establishment of German Bible Societies in the nineteenth century
The nineteenth century has been called the century of bible societies (Risch quoted by Gundert, p. 34). In German-speaking lands alone, some 500 bible societies were established in the nineteenth century. In contrast, in the eighteenth century, there was only one bible society established in German lands, the Canstein Bible Society (Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt) (Heidenreich 2024). What then led to the proliferation of…
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A Tale of Two Translators
Linguistic fieldwork in the Indonesian archipelago, throughout the 19th century, was largely the province of the Dutch Bible Society (NBG). Two Bible translators stand out for their contributions to linguistic scholarship: J.F.C. Gericke on Javanese in the late 1820s-1850s, and
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The Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt: The oldest German Bible Society
[This blog is written by Sven Heidenreich] When people think of the systematic translation and distribution of the Bible, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) certainly comes to mind. It was the largest of all Bible Societies in the nineteenth century. Originally founded in 1804, it set itself the task of bringing the Bible in the local language and at a…
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Language and the Missionary World Map: Platt’s and Radley’s histories of the BFBS
Two unpublished histories of the British and Foreign Bible Society were written in the 1820s to 1830s (BFBS Archives, Cambridge University Library, GBR/0374/BFBS/BSA/E3/8/1 and E3/8/2). It is unclear to me why there were two, both by BFBS staff, written at roughly the same time; they cover much the same topics, figures, and languages and do not express notably strong or divergent views.…
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Some insight into our Digital Humanities Stream
[This blog is written by Louis Knölker.] As part of our research, one of our goals is to visualize the distribution and development of Bible translations and to make the resulting interactive world map available to researchers on a dedicated website. Read the blog to know how we achieve this….
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Blubber for Bibles
The Global Bible project is focussing on three case study regions: the Arctic, Australia and Oceania and West Africa. This blog relates to missions to the Inuit people of the Arctic. After the defeat of the United Kingdom of Denmark Norway in the Napoleonic wars, the British and Foreign Bible Society was more actively involved in supporting and publishing translations into the…
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The 1940 BFBS Conference on African Languages
On 28 May 1940, a group of 33 people met at the British and Foreign Bible Society headquarters (‘Bible House’) in London for a conference on African languages. The evacuation at Dunkirk was under way; the sea was full of U-boats; on the morning of the conference, the news arrived of the Belgian capitulation. What better moment to discuss the state of…
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Ludwig Adzaklo: A long overlooked indigenous Ewe Bible translator of the Bremen Mission in German Togoland
I am currently poring over archives of the Bremen Mission (Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft) and the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) on the translation of the Bible into Ewe, the dominant language of German Togoland, spoken in present day southern Togo and south-eastern Ghana….