By Matthew A. Vogan 

William Carey (1761–1834), often called the ‘Father of Modern Missions’, left an indelible mark, not just on missionary history, but also on the people and history of India. His vision and commitment in Bible translation continues to encourage our endeavours today.

Carey’s strategy for mission work was to focus on Bible translation. Some might criticise him for focusing on this rather than giving all his time to evangelistic work, but Carey had a long-term vision. He could have quailed before the enormity of the task, but he believed that the Scriptures should be available in the vernacular languages of the people. He saw these versions as ‘lights that would brighten all of India’ and advocated for the Scriptures to be given in the dialects of different provinces to effectively enlighten India.¹ He said that he would work on giving Indians the Word in their own tongue ‘till a number of living preachers were created by the Scriptures themselves’.²

When Carey arrived in India in 1793, he encountered an immensely diverse linguistic landscape, with hundreds of languages and dialects spoken across the subcontinent. He directly translated or supervised translations of the Bible into at least 35 languages and dialects of the Indian subcontinent. This was a monumental achievement within the limitations of his context, and he faced many challenges but worked tirelessly to overcome linguistic diversity, technical challenges, and cultural barriers. His strategic approach to tackling these challenges remains part of his lasting legacy. Today we can look back to those early labours 200 years ago for both inspiration and assistance.

Challenges

To ‘translate the Sacred Scriptures into any language, would require much time and patient labour’ wrote Carey and his colleagues at Serampore.³ Such was the diversity of languages that Carey and his team had to work on multiple languages simultaneously, each requiring its own unique approach. Not only this, he often had to start from scratch, developing alphabets, grammars, and dictionaries before translation work could even begin since the languages had not been standardised. Initially he thought that all the languages of north India were dialects of one language but later understood they were distinct languages.

Understanding local customs, manners, and beliefs was important to the brethren at Serampore. This meant that Carey needed the help of natives who understood the languages and cultures intimately, to ensure that the translations were both accurate and sensitive. Carey also had to handle opposition from both colonial authorities and those native to India who resisted Christianity as a foreign religion.

Today’s challenges are also significant. India has a population of 1.4 billion people comprising 2,272 people groups speaking 780 different languages. Some 1.37 billion of this population in 2,041 people groups are defined as ‘unreached’, with less than 2% considered to be Evangelical Christians. A cultural and official resistance to the Christian Gospel can still be experienced in many places. How many of the over 600,000 villages in that nation have the light of Scripture?

Many of these Indian languages have no Scripture at all, still more do not have a full Bible. Some others do have a Bible, but the translation available is poor because it has been rendered from the English Good News Bible. Sadly, even the translations that Carey produced in the major Indian languages were later revised in their underlying text and translation approach to conform them to the Greek Critical Text, and many people do not realise that the so-called Old Version in these languages are not at all what Carey and his team laboured to produce. However, we are able to continue their labours for today.

Strategy

A self-taught linguist, Carey had already studied many languages, and set himself to understand those of North India, commencing with Bengali. He was committed to constantly improving his translation and revised his Bengali New Testament eight times before his death. Despite his abilities, only a collaborative approach could address the scale of the challenge. Therefore he partnered with fellow missionaries, local scholars, and native speakers. He then trained Indian Christians to become translators, which not only accelerated the pace of translation, but also gave these indigenous believers the confidence to declare the Gospel amongst their fellows. Carey also founded Serampore College to train future translators amongst others.

Carey’s deep study of Indian languages revealed to him the connections among them. For example, he understood that many of the languages in India, such as Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and others, were part of the Indo-Aryan language family and shared a common linguistic ancestry. These languages share significant similarities in vocabulary and grammar due to their Indo-Aryan roots and historical connections with Sanskrit (a classical Indian language). Carey commenced with Bengali, which is part of the Indo-Aryan family, and this gave him a foundation to branch out into related languages such as Hindi, Oriya, Marathi, and Assamese. Carey’s knowledge of Bengali and Sanskrit further informed his work in Hindi and Oriya. For closely related languages, Carey’s understanding of their common features likely helped him streamline his translation work by adapting and modifying existing translations for similar languages. Thus, Carey strategically focused on completing translations in one language of a particular branch, then used that as a basis to more easily translate related languages.

Similarly, Carey identified distinctions with Dravidian languages like Telugu or Kannada, which were structurally and lexically very different from Indo-Aryan languages. He approached them as unique projects, requiring entirely separate endeavours.

In recent years, we have likewise found that a reliable Hindi Bible translation paves the way to translation projects in many related languages. Using technology and a standardised format allows translations in many cognate languages to be drafted alongside the Hindi. These draft translations then require the attention of native proofreaders and editors to verify, adjust, and modify when needed. In this way we are able to use the Hindi translation work in other sister languages such as Bhojpuri, Urdu, Punjabi (Eastern and Western), Gujarati, Chhattisgarhi, and Marathi. Hundreds of millions speak these languages, and an accurate and faithful translation of the Bible is greatly needed even though people are not always aware of this.

Technological assistance

The establishment of the Serampore Mission Press near Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1800 was a key development. The advanced printing technology enabled movable type and fonts for multiple Indian scripts which resulted in efficient publication for a variety of languages, and it produced 212,000 copies of Scripture.⁴ Today we are able to make use of computer assistance to manage different scripts and related languages. Our Editorial System helps us check and format the text and then have it typeset for print publication or published directly on the Online Bible which can be accessed across the world. At the time of writing, we have published Scriptures in 38 languages on our Online Bible App, which can be found at tbsonlinebible.com. We would encourage our supporters to make this valuable resource known to others.

Continuing the Carey Project today

We have already seen how it is possible to use Carey’s strategy to restore his approach to translation in terms of accuracy to the Received Text for related languages. Using Hindi, and the understanding of how best to translate the Greek faithfully, we can see how the Bengali translation could also be corrected. This of course was where Carey himself started, and like him we can proceed from there to other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages such as Assamese, Oriya, and Nagamese. These languages can be worked on simultaneously, keeping pace with the Hindi if the appropriate people who are well-skilled in the languages can help. Please pray for the right people with time and commitment to devote themselves to this work.

Conclusion

William Carey’s strategic approach to Bible translation in Indian languages was a monumental achievement that combined linguistic expertise, strategic thinking and, above all, unwavering faith. His work not only brought the Scriptures to millions of Indians but also laid the foundation for future translation efforts worldwide.

No doubt Carey made some mistakes along the way about the best dialects and scripts, but his legacy serves as a powerful reminder of the transformative power of the Word of God and the importance of making it accessible to every nation, tribe, and tongue.

Through his faith, dedication, and willingness to pursue innovation with discernment, Carey left a lasting impact on both India and the global church. Yet he remained humble in his sense of dependence on the Almighty. ‘I am very fruitless and almost useless, but the Word and the attributes of God are my hope, my confidence, and my joy, and I trust that His glorious designs will undoubtedly be answered’.⁵

When Carey died in 1834 he left a task unfinished since there were many languages yet to have a translation of God’s Holy Book. A great work of education and distribution as well as evangelisation was also needed to realise the vision that motivated him. Sadly even the translations that he produced were subsequently heavily altered in relation to the text and translation approach he had used, so that these Old Versions are not indeed as old as they claim to be. Even Carey’s own son began to use the Critical Greek Text in his ongoing work, whereas Carey himself was criticised for using the Received Text. In some languages this means that we have a work of recovery to engage in so that we can continue the work of Carey. However, we are able to learn from his strategic approach and apply it to accelerate the work of translation in related languages. In other cases we apply the same text and translation approach to languages that Carey never managed to address, such as the tribal languages of Manipur where we have nine projects. The work of translation is also being done for the first time in some tribal languages such as Halam.

William Carey and his colleagues were motivated by the hope that arises from faith, and wrote after around ten years of engagement in the work,

The help which God has afforded us already in this work is a loud call to us to “go forward.” … We consider the publication of the Divine Word throughout India as an object which we ought never to give up till accomplished, looking to the Fountain of all knowledge and strength to qualify us for this great work, and to carry us through it to the praise of His Holy Name.⁶

What might the Lord do through TBS as we seek to translate as much of Scripture in as many languages as possible by 2034, the bicentenary of Carey’s death? The following was the earnest longing and prayer of Carey and his colleagues which we can only echo today,

May the Lord increase the desire after His Sacred Word, till there shall not be in India, nor throughout the East, a family or even a single individual who does not possess a copy.⁷