A language is considered to be small if it has less than one million native speakers. A micro-language has a very low number of speakers, which we put—quite arbitrarily—at below 500. According to the Ethnologue, 19th EditionSee Lewis, M. P., G. F. Simons, and C. D. Fennig (eds.). (2016). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International., there are 1,154 such languages worldwide. Micro-languages may or may not be moribund languages; the number of speakers is not what puts a language on a path to extinction, but rather the fact that a language is not learned anymore by a new generation of speakers.

Missionaries have translated Scripture into about 152 micro-languages worldwide, in spite of the risk that unforeseen events during the translation process might tear apart the tiny community. Table 1 presents a selection of micro-languages into which Scripture (books of the Bible, the New Testament, or the complete Bible) has been translated.

Table 1: Some Micro-languages with Scriptures

Biblical translation into micro-languages is a relatively recent phenomenon, which began to occur only in the late 20^th century. As the speaker communities of micro-languages live in remote and inaccessible areas, their presence is hidden from plain view and often known only to language planners. For micro-languages, the cost-benefit analysis of a Bible translation project is of foremost concern. A less cost-intensive alternative to Bible translation might be a literacy program in the national languages in which the Bible is already available. In this part of the project, we will evaluate the factors that have motivated both planners of translation agencies and individual translators to rank the benefits above the costs. We pay particular attention to those micro-languages into which the entire Bible (as opposed to a portion) was translated, as their cost-benefit imbalance is more significant.

Macro-languages are spoken by huge populations, the number of which we put—again, quite arbitrarily—at above 70 million. By this definition, there are 18 macro-languages, among them eight languages with more than 100 million speakers each.

Table 2: Macro-languages with Scriptures

The largest language is Mandarin Chinese, with 960 million or more native speakers. Some macro-languages were not used by large speech communities in ancient times, but expanded their population base through colonisation (i.e. English, Portuguese, and Spanish). In contrast to micro-languages, Biblical translation into macro-languages is a phenomenon of the early modern period and of the 19th century, not of the 20th century. The cost-benefit balance of translation projects into macro-languages is skewed as well, this time in favour of the benefits (a potential readership of more than 70 million people outweighs the efforts invested in a translation project). Detailed histories of the translation of the Bible in macro-languages are available, mainly in the archives of translation agencies and also in distilled published form. In the past 20 years, a group of interdisciplinary scholars have organised conferencesInternational Conferences on Missionary Linguistics (ICML):
ICML-1 (Oslo 2002),
ICML-2 (Sao Paulo 2004),
ICML-3 (Hongkong 2005),
ICML-4 (Valladolid 2006),
ICML-5 (Mérida 2008),
ICML-6 (Tokyo 2010),
ICML-7 (Bremen 2012),
ICML-8 (Lima),
ICML-9 (Manila 2016). which critically assess the works of missionaries and Bible translators in colonial timesTwo edited books emerged from these conferences:

Zwartjes, O. and E. Hovdhaugen (eds.), 2004. Missionary Linguistics. Selected papers from the First International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, 13-16 March 2003. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Zimmermann, K. and B. Kellermeier-Rehbein (eds.), 2015, Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter.. While most of these researchers only evaluate the linguistic contribution of early modern missionaries, some also criticise the missionaries for their complicity with colonial powersSee Fountain, C., 2015, “Transculturation, assimilation, and appropriation in the missionary representation of Nahuatl”, in Colonialism and Missionary Linguistics, edited by K. Zimmermann and B. Kellermeier-Rehbein, pp. 177-198. Berlin: De Gruyter.. We do not intend to engage with the whole debate, but only wish to shed light on one aspect, which is the longevity of the early modern Bible translations. According to the logic of cultural imperialism, Bible translations in indigenous languages would have become obsolete or insignificant once the colonies regained independence. The truth is that most of the initial Bible translations have been continuously revised by indigenous agencies. In this project, we will track the Biblical translation history of all macro-languages up to the present day and assess the following research questions:

• Is the size of the speech community correlated to the year of Bible translation (e.g. the bigger the earlier)?

• What was the dialect on which the early modern translation was based (standard, literary, or others)?