Bible Translation Project is Begun for Coptic Language

In the city of Marburg, Germany, a professor of linguistics and a group of Coptic Christians are embarking on a journey to translate the Bible into Coptic. Coptic is the language of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, and while most Coptic Christians in Egypt speak and read Arabic, as are their Bibles written in Arabic, there is a recent movement to attempt to bring the ancient language of Coptic back into everyday use.

Literary translation and religious historical translation such as that of Biblical text, especially ancient or rare language Biblical translation, is a task that requires extremely specialized scholarly translations skills, as well as cultural knowledge and localized comprehension of the language. This goes for any type of document translation service, whether English to Japanese translation, English to Dutch translation, or French to English translation. However, the more specialized, unique or rarely spoken the language, the more difficult and painstaking the task of document translation. The Coptic translation of the Bible is expected to take about 8 years, and cost over half a million dollars.

Rare Language Translation: Not a Common Service

Thank goodness document translation service at Tomedes doesn't require 8 years or 5 hundred thousand dollars. However, we are not afraid to tackle a rare language translation, or an old historical document translation to or from a nearly extinct language. Languages belonging to tribes, villages, and other small groups of indigenous peoples around the world have long been translated, with such services as educational translation, multimedia communication and information technology translation, religious document translations and much more. Common day methods of communication via translation are reaching further and further. No language should be considered remote, or left without the ability to communicate with others through a professional translation service like Tomedes.

Consideration for priority, when translating something like the Bible into Coptic for Coptic Christian use, is accuracy and localized document translation. Not only does the document translation have to be accurate, but the translated words themselves must be localized with current day relevance and cultural consideration. Since Coptic is an ancient language, this translation will take some considerable time and effort to develop – not to mention the Bible is the longest literary work in translation.

It will be interesting to see when the final Coptic translation is ready, if it holds up to modern day standards of Biblical translation, or if some of the wording will have to be improvised. That remains to be seen, in about 8 years.