Amid the alarm raised in socio-linguistic circles that over 90 per cent of the world’s major languages are likely to go into extinction in the next century, LoveWorld Publishing Ltd, publishers of The Rhapsody of Realities on Friday revealed that the publication has now been translated into 7,000 languages worldwide to tackle the problem.
Speaking at a world press conference in Lagos, the Director of Operations, LoveWorld Publishing, Pastor (Mrs.) Lola Aisida said 520 of these languages were Nigeria alone.
“Never in the history of the world, and in all the record books of Guinness Book of World Records, has any literary material – be it document, film, writing, book, or any piece of historical or modern parchment – been translated into 7,000 languages.
“The meteoric rise of the Rhapsody of Realities devotional to the most-coveted spot as the world’s No 1 daily devotional and now Most Translated Book in the world began with the first edition published in the English Language by LoveWorld Publishing.”
She said that 22 years after, The Rhapsody of Realities, a daily devotional authored by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of The Christ Embassy, is now the most translated book in the world and has grown into a vast network of publishers spread across several countries.
Aisida added that the work of translation is deployed by a massive army of translators who applied due diligence processes in delivering Rhapsody of Realities to all the 7,000 languages.
“There are 7,139 languages spoken today, but a report says 42 per cent of these languages are endangered. These statistics posed a global challenge fit only for a global publishing house that transcends the inadequacies of the publishing space,” she said.
“By any standard, the work of translation is not an easy one. If it were, the world’s popular literary pieces would have long been made available in all languages. On the contrary, authenticated records show that the most translated short film documentary is in eleven translations; the most translated short film has 22 translations; the most translated document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, produced by the United Nations in 1948 has been translated into only 370 languages as of 2019.
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