Book of Faith

A BBC World Service Heart and Soul documentary

It's four hundred years since the King James version of the Bible was completed. Its imagery and poetry have penetrated and influenced the English language around the world. In this edition of Heart and Soul Michael Ford speaks to those translating the Bible today into the thousands of languages that don't have a complete version as yet and about the challenges of contemporary translation. We also hear how cutting-edge artificial intelligence is transforming the process but still cannot replace the human translator.

The academic and former missionary Daniel Everett explains how his attempts to translate the Gospels for an Amazonian people led him to lose his faith and engage in a very public row with the acclaimed linguist and thinker Noam Chomsky.

The Jamaican poet and novelist Kei Miller explores why the King James version has been such a key influence on his work and we speak to church-goers in Kingston about why the patois version of the Bible has reinvigorated their understanding of the scriptures. (BBC)

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