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The Importance of Accessing the Bible in a Language You Know Well

Despite what I posted earlier about people having several mother tongues, it's still a fundamental belief of ours that people need to access Scripture in a language they know well, that they are fluent in. Today I was asked in an email for articles that back this up. In fact, here is the question:

'I’m writing a paper based on my research about the impact of reading the Bible in English versus mother tongue, and wondered if you have articles to hand or Wycliffe/SLI (sic.) statements of values which might outline why we believe that having the Bible in one’s heart language/mother tongue is important (even if the English translation is available).'

The question was written by a PhD student. By SLI she means SIL, I think. Wycliffe is short for Wycliffe Bible Translators. TBH I was slightly confused by the question. Why 'English'. Did she mean 'the Language of Wider Communication' (Spanish, French, Russian, Classical Arabic... )?

Here is my reply:

This is the best one: https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/26_2_PDFs/85-88_Brown_et_al.pdf

And the eight conditions, conditions 1 and 2 are relevant too: https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/26_2_PDFs/89-98_Eight%20Conditions.pdf (actually, read all of them).

You said 'reading'. Freudian slip? So read this one about orality: http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/21_3_PDFs/122_Brown.pdf.

There are many more. See Bibliographies of the above for a start.
Oh, I just thought, Lamin Sanneh's article on the translatability of Scripture, which talks about the incarnational form of God's Word. You can read about that here:

Sanneh, Lamin (1989) Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

So, in summary, there are many good articles talking about the need to have the Bible in a) a language we know well (one of our mother tongues) b) in forms that are accessible to us, which may well be orally rather than in written form. Often, these days, in WBT/SIL we encourage both print and non-print publishing to take place.
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