Translation is the process of communicating a message into a language that is different from the one in which the message was originally written. The message may be in a song, a poem, a story, directions, a telephone message, or a sermon. But if a person is not able to understand that message because it is written or told in an unfamiliar language, the message must be translated. This is especially important when it is the message of the Bible that is to be communicated.

The Bible is made up of several individual books that were written and told long ago in various languages quite unfamiliar to us today. None of these books was originally written in English (or Spanish or most other languages used throughout the world today). They were written in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic (for the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures) and in Greek (for the New Testament). Without Bible translation, people today would have to learn these three languages in order to read and understand the words of the Bible!

The work of translating the Bible began around 250 B.C. when a group of Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) into Greek because many Jewish people were living in places where Greek was the everyday language. Since that first Bible translation, the words of both the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament have been translated into hundreds of languages. These languages include ancient languages (like Coptic, Arabic, Latin, and Syriac), as well as more recent, modern languages (like Portuguese, Russian, Navajo, Danish, Spanish, and English). The purpose behind all these Bible translations is exactly the same: to put the words of the Bible into a language that people will understand.

One of the most important Bible translators was the Englishman William Tyndale (1484-1536), often called "The Father of the English Bible." Tyndale wanted to make the Scriptures understandable to all people. But due to the political and religious tensions that existed throughout Europe during the Reformation (14th-17th centuries), he was unable to get permission to do his translation in England. So he went to Germany, where he published his New Testament in February 1526. Though he experienced a great deal of opposition, he continued his work of translating the Old Testament from Hebrew, and he published the first five books of the Old Testament (Genesis through Deuteronomy) in 1530.

Tyndale's work and influence is most readily seen in what is surely the most significant English Bible translation ever done, the King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611. The King James Version (also called the Authorized Version) was prepared at the request of King James I of England at a time when several Church-sponsored versions of the English Bible were in use. Although there was resistance to the King James Version at first (since many people felt a loyalty to their own Church's translation), it eventually won wide acceptance and became the standard English version of the Bible in the English-speaking world for three centuries. It remains one of the most widely-used English translations of the Bible today.