# Missionary Translation and African Languages ## Intro When missionaries translated the Bible into African languages, they did something they did not fully foresee. They told Africans that God speaks their language, used African names for God, and put the Scriptures directly into African hands. Gambian-born historian Lamin Sanneh argued that this did more to strengthen African cultures than to erase them, and that it gave Africans the means to judge the missionaries by the Bible itself. That idea is called the translation principle. ![An old copy of the Yoruba Bible displayed under glass, open to the Psalms](/codex/assets/first-yoruba-bible.jpg) *An early copy of the Yoruba Bible, the translation led by Samuel Ajayi Crowther, open at the Psalms. Photo: Ridzaina, CC BY-SA 4.0 ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Yoruba_Bible.jpg)), resized.* ## In full The translation principle, set out most fully in Lamin Sanneh's *Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture* (1989), holds that Christianity, unlike religions that tie revelation to one sacred language, is translatable by nature. It has no single holy tongue. The New Testament was written in Greek about a Jesus who spoke Aramaic, and the church translated the Scriptures early into Syriac, Coptic, Latin and Ge'ez. Sanneh drew three consequences for Africa: 1. **Translation relativizes the missionary's culture.** Once the Bible exists in Yoruba or Kikuyu, English or German is no longer the language of God. The missionary becomes one reader among many. 2. **Translation dignifies the receiving culture.** To translate is to treat a language as worthy of carrying revelation. Missionaries had to learn African languages, write grammars and dictionaries, and in many cases give a language its first written form. 3. **Translation hands authority to the reader.** Africans who could read the Scriptures in their mother tongue could test missionary teaching and colonial practice against them, and many did. Sanneh contrasted this with what he called the "diffusion" model, in which a faith spreads by carrying its original language and culture with it. He pointed to Islam's treatment of the Arabic Quran as the clearest example, while acknowledging that Muslims also translate the meaning of the Quran for study. The contrast is his interpretation and is disputed by some scholars of Islam. Andrew Walls framed a parallel idea in his essay "The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture" (collected in *The Missionary Movement in Christian History*, 1996). He described two forces at work in every Christian community: an "indigenizing principle" that makes the faith at home in each culture, and a "pilgrim principle" that keeps it from being fully at home anywhere, because the gospel also judges every culture. ## A brief history of the Bible in African languages ### Ancient translations - **Coptic.** Egyptian Christians translated the Scriptures into the Sahidic and Bohairic dialects of Coptic by the third and fourth centuries. See [Coptic Orthodox Church](/codex/coptic-orthodox-church/). - **Ge'ez.** The Bible was translated into Ge'ez in Aksum from roughly the fifth century, producing the canon of the [Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/). The [Garima Gospels](/codex/garima-gospels/) are among the oldest surviving Ge'ez manuscripts. - **Old Nubian.** Christian Nubia produced liturgical and biblical texts in Old Nubian alongside Greek and Coptic. See [Christian Nubia](/codex/christian-nubia/). These translations predate the Latin Vulgate's dominance in Europe and long predate any English Bible. ### The modern missionary era | Language | Translator or team | Notes | |---|---|---| | Setswana | Robert Moffat (London Missionary Society) | Complete Bible finished in 1857 and printed on the mission press at Kuruman. | | Yoruba | [Samuel Ajayi Crowther](/codex/samuel-ajayi-crowther/) with African and European colleagues | Crowther, himself Yoruba and a freed captive, published a Yoruba grammar in 1843; the complete Yoruba Bible was finished in the 1880s. He also produced primers for Igbo and Nupe. | | Swahili | Johann Ludwig Krapf and successors | Krapf's grammar and translation work in the 1840s laid foundations for later Swahili Bibles. | | Kikamba | [John Mbiti](/codex/john-mbiti/) | Mbiti translated the whole New Testament into his mother tongue in retirement; it was published in 2014. | The pattern repeated across the continent. Mission grammars, orthographies and dictionaries gave many African languages their first standard written forms, which later served African literature, schooling and national life. ## The names of God The single most important translation decision was what to call God. In most of Africa, translators chose the existing name of the supreme being rather than importing a foreign word: - **Olorun** or Olodumare among the Yoruba - **Chukwu** among the Igbo - **Onyame** or Nyame among the Akan - **Ngai** among the Kikuyu - **Nkulunkulu** among the Zulu - **Mungu** in Swahili Sanneh argued that this choice carried a theological claim: that Africans already knew something true of God before the missionaries came, and that the gospel completes rather than replaces that knowledge. [John Mbiti](/codex/john-mbiti/) and [Kwame Bediako](/codex/kwame-bediako/) built on this, Mbiti in his studies of African concepts of God and Bediako in his argument that African Christianity stands in continuity with the African religious past. The idea fits the biblical theme that God "left not himself without witness" ([Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/), KJV) and that he is known through creation ([Romans 1:20](/codex/romans-1-20/)). See [General Revelation](/codex/general-revelation/). Critics from the evangelical side, notably [Byang Kato](/codex/byang-kato/), warned that continuity can slide into syncretism or universalism if African religion is treated as a saving path in its own right. Critics from the nationalist side, notably Okot p'Bitek, argued that Christian scholars had reshaped African gods in a Christian image. Both critiques are discussed at [African Traditional Religion and Christianity](/codex/african-traditional-religion-and-christianity/). ## Mother-tongue theology Bediako pressed the translation principle further: if Scripture can be heard in an African language, then theology can be done in it. He drew attention to the oral prayers of Afua Kuma, a Ghanaian farmer and midwife whose Twi praises of Jesus were published as *Jesus of the Deep Forest*, as genuine African Christology produced outside the academy. On this view, Africans are not only receivers of a translated faith but authors of its theology, as Africans were in the age of [Augustine](/codex/augustine/) and [Athanasius](/codex/athanasius/). ## Why it matters for apologetics - **Against "cultural imperialism."** A religion that sacralizes one culture can only spread by replacing others. A religion that insists on translation spreads by entering others. The vernacular Bible is the evidence. See [Christianity Is the White Mans Religion Objection Defeater](/codex/christianity-is-the-white-mans-religion-objection-defeater/). - **Against "the Bible was used to control Africans."** Controlled access was the colonial instinct; translation is the opposite instinct. Where Africans read the full Bible for themselves, they used it to found their own churches and to oppose injustice. Compare the edited [Slave Bible](/codex/slave-bible/), which shows what control actually required. - **For the unity of humanity.** The vision of [Revelation 7:9](/codex/revelation-7-9/), a multitude "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" (KJV), is fulfilled in translation, not in a single imperial language. ## Tensions - Sanneh's thesis is sometimes read as saying missions were benign. He did not claim that. He argued that translation had effects that cut against missionary paternalism and colonial control, often against the missionaries' intentions. - Some translation choices are contested. Using an indigenous name for God carries the risk of importing traits of that deity; translators debated this case by case. ## See also - [Lamin Sanneh](/codex/lamin-sanneh/), who developed the translation principle - [Kwame Bediako](/codex/kwame-bediako/), mother-tongue theology and African Christian identity - [Samuel Ajayi Crowther](/codex/samuel-ajayi-crowther/), translator of the Yoruba Bible - [John Mbiti](/codex/john-mbiti/), African concepts of God and the Kikamba New Testament - [Christianity and Colonialism in Africa](/codex/christianity-and-colonialism-in-africa/), how mission and empire related - [African Traditional Religion and Christianity](/codex/african-traditional-religion-and-christianity/), continuity, contextualization and syncretism - [Garima Gospels](/codex/garima-gospels/), among the oldest Ge'ez Gospel manuscripts - [Africa and Christianity](/codex/africa-and-christianity/), the master hub
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is Lamin Sanneh's translation principle?** It is the argument, made in *Translating the Message* (1989), that Christianity has no single sacred language and spreads by being translated. Sanneh argued that translating the Bible into African languages strengthened African cultures, made the missionary's own culture just one among many, and gave Africans the authority to read and judge the Scriptures for themselves. **Q: Did missionaries destroy African languages?** In the main, the opposite happened with Bible translation. Missionaries wrote grammars and dictionaries and gave many African languages their first standard written form. Some missions did suppress African customs and favored European languages in schools, but the translated Bible became a major support for African languages. **Q: What was the first Bible translated into an African language?** The earliest were ancient: Coptic translations in Egypt by the third and fourth centuries, and Ge'ez translations in Aksum (Ethiopia) from around the fifth century. In the modern era, early complete Bibles include Robert Moffat's Setswana Bible, finished in 1857. **Q: Why did missionaries use African names for God?** Most translators adopted the existing name of the supreme being, such as Olorun in Yoruba or Nyame in Akan. Lamin Sanneh argued this implied that Africans already knew something true of God before the missionaries arrived, which matches the biblical teaching that God has not left himself without witness ([Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/)). **Q: Who translated the Yoruba Bible?** Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba man rescued from the slave trade who became the first African Anglican bishop, led the translation with African and European colleagues. He published a Yoruba grammar in 1843, and the complete Yoruba Bible was finished in the 1880s. **Q: Is Christianity a form of cultural imperialism?** The translation record argues against it. A faith that sacralizes one culture spreads by replacing others, while Christianity spreads by being translated into the language of each people. Mission history includes real cultural contempt, but the vernacular Bible put the faith into African hands.