Global Networks of Bible Translation and their Cultural and Linguistic Impact
Westminster College, Cambridge, 7-8 Nov 2024
We are inviting abstracts for short presentations by PhD/postgraduate students at the Translating
Colonialism conference. Presentations may take a number of formats, including speed talks (10 mins),
posters or pictures with invited responses, or structured conversations with peers or senior researchers.
These will be part of a dedicated postgraduate session attended by all conference participants.
Please send your 150-word abstract + a short CV to globil-conference2024@bristol.ac.uk before 15
May 2024. For selected participants travel costs and accommodation (1-2 nights) will be covered as
well as mentoring and participation in the conference + conference dinner. Up to four bursaries will be
available.
At the beginnings of the 19th century, Christianity was not a majority religion except in Europe and its
settler colonies. By century’s end, it had become a world religion, with Biblical texts translated into
over 500 languages by 1914. Missionary translation networks, accordingly, were a significant factor
in cultural and linguistic change on a global scale – transformations that were often accompanied by
colonial violence, cultural destruction, and language death. While the ‘Global Bible’ aspired to
universality, the ways in which it was made, used, read, and received or rejected were culturally and
loc ally specific. It was both an instrument of colonial power and a mass-marketed product of
missionary linguistics and ethnology; for the converts, it was also a source of cultural and religious
self-understanding.
This conference uses the ‘Global Bible’ as a lens for the study of global transformations, missionary
networks, colonial knowledge, the clash of cosmologies, and Indigenous self-understanding. Its aim is
to cover perspectives from a broad range of disciplines – history, linguistics, missiology, religious
studies, anthropology – and regions, with special attention to the role of global majority actors and
perspectives as well as to the contribution of Bible societies. The main period we will be considering
is the long 19th century, but earlier and later translations and networks will be relevant for
understanding these global developments.
Potential topics for discussion can include:
- Indigenous translators/language teachers/informants and their agency in colonial settings
- Translation problems, linguistic innovation, and the redefinition of cultural core concepts
- Biblical universalism, confessional segmentation, and religious syncretism
- The mapping of the world’s languages through missionary networks
- Bible translation as a lens for the study of Indigenous languages, cultures, and religions
- Circulation of knowledge within and between missionary translation networks
- The ‘Global Bible’ as a marketable object and an instrument of power
- Relations and perceived hierarchies between languages: metropolitan/Indigenous,
Biblical/profane, classical/vernacular, literary/popular - International relations between different Bible societies, and the role of foreigners (e.g.
Germans in British networks) as well as global majority converts within them
This conference is organized as part of the project Global Bible: British and German Bible Societies
Translating Colonialism, 1800-1914 (GloBil) hosted by Universität Münster / University of Bristol in
partnership with Cambridge University Library and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).