IT is the most-read book in history and has topped bestseller lists the world over.
Now Scots-based experts are leading an attempt to make the Bible available in all of the planet's 6900 languages.
Staff at the offices of Wycliffe Bible Translators in Linlithgow, West Lothian, are developing technology to create typefaces for some of the world's rarest tongues. Many - including those of tribes in the Amazon and Borneo rainforests - have only ever been written by hand.
Wycliffe has set a target of printing the Bible in every spoken language by 2025.
Peter Martin, a development officer, has created lettering for the language of Brazil's remote Apurina indians as well as the ancient Vai language used in parts of Liberia. He said: "We have just printed a copy of the New Testament in Vai, making it the first book ever to be printed in that language.
"Vai is just one of hundreds of smaller languages in Eurasia, North Africa and Asia that cannot be written on a computer until we develop a computer package that can deal with them.
"They do not use Roman letters and there's nothing out there in any software packages at the moment. We have effectively gone back to the blackboard."
He added: "We tell people that God speaks to them in their language so it would seem natural for them to have a written record of God's Word in their alphabet."
The firm, with a UK head office in High Wycombe, estimates there are 2700 languages with no Bible translation.
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