Witnesses’ website beats Facebook as world’s most translated

MANGALDAN, Pangasinan—Move aside Facebook and Twitter. The record for most translated website belonged to JW.org, the official site of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The religious website had been translated into 1,000 languages, beating Facebook and Twitter which have a combined user base of more than a billion.

The languages to which JW.org was translated included 24 major and indigenous Philippine languages, according to John Yunker, author of 2019 The Web Globalization Report Card, which keeps track of the world’s best global websites.

In a statement, the Witnesses cited Yunker as saying JW.org was “ahead of the curve” because it treated with great respect people who spoke languages not supported by Fortune 500, or the world’s richest companies.

“Even Facebook, with support for more than 100 languages, has a long way to go,” Yunker said in a statement quoted by the Witnesses.

According to Yunker, while JW.org is “volunteer-driven” it was able to outpace the world’s most popular crowdsourced website, Wikipedia, which has translations for only 280 languages.

He said commercial websites consider translating content to new languages if these languages would bring in revenue.

“For Jehovah’s Witnesses, though, profit is not the motive,” said Yunker.

“Their goal is to translate the Bible’s message so that it is accurate, clear, and easy for readers to benefit from,” he said.

Edited by TSB